Lawsuits have blamed the highly caffeinated drink for at least two deaths.
A Panera Bread spokesperson says the restaurant chain is phasing out its Charged Lemonade, a highly caffeinated beverage that has been blamed for at least two deaths in lawsuits.
The beverages prompted controversy in October following a lawsuit filed by the family of 21-year-old Sarah Katz, a University of Pennsylvania student with a heart condition who died after consuming Charged Lemonade. A second lawsuit was filed in December by the family of Dennis Brown, a Florida man with a chromosomal deficiency disorder and a developmental delay who also died after drinking a Charged Lemonade.
A third lawsuit was filed in January by Lauren Skerritt, a 28-year-old Rhode Island woman, which claimed the beverage left her with “permanent cardiac injuries.”
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Panera previously advertised its Charged Lemonade as “Plant-based and Clean with as much caffeine as our Dark Roast coffee.” But the lawsuits said that at 390 milligrams, a large, 30-fluid-ounce Charged Lemonade has more caffeine in total than any size of Panera’s dark roast coffee, referring to the amount of caffeine that is in the drink with no ice. Panera has since updated its nutrition information to reflect how much caffeine is in the Charged Lemonade with ice, listing the large size of the blood orange Charged Lemonade, for example, as having 302 milligrams.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, healthy adults can generally safely consume 400 milligrams of caffeine a day.
This puts into context how truly dangerous Panera’s lemonade was: combining instant coffee and monster energy drink together would only net you maybe 200mg of caffeine (160mg from a 500ml monster, and most instant coffee is incredibly weak with 25-40mg of caffeine being in them). You’re combining two known stimulants together and still cannot approach 1 charged lemonade. It was incredibly stupid of Panera to make this, and then defend it (although I get why they defended it in court).
I did the math, a gallon of coke doesn’t have this much caffeine. It’s more than just filling the cup with redbull without ice. You can knock back 2 16oz monsters and get less. It’s more caffeine than two original recipe Four Loko.
This stuff would have still been irresponsible if served in shot glasses, let alone a 30oz.
No, I looked it up when this first came out. The caffeine content in Panera’s stuff was about the same as an equivalent amount of coffee.
It’s only equivalent to something like a pour over. Most people can’t properly brew something even remotely close to the straight caffeine content of the charged lemonade. Not to mention that to most people a lemonade is refreshing and they’re drinking 24+ ounces of it at a time.
You’re looking at it from the perspective of caffeine per ml (which still, is not close since they’re artificially loading this with straight caffeine), but it’s really more about how this guises the caffeine behind something refreshing and easy to drink in large quantities. It’s why fruity alcohol cocktails are so much more dangerous to drink since they cover how much actual alcohol you’re consuming.
It’s still well below caffeine by volume of actual energy drinks (2-300mg in a 16oz can is fairly standard beyond monster and red bull)