Panera Bread’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade is now blamed for a second death, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
Dennis Brown, of Fleming Island, Florida, drank three Charged Lemonades from a local Panera on Oct. 9 and then suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on his way home, the suit says.
Brown, 46, had an unspecified chromosomal deficiency disorder, a developmental delay and a mild intellectual disability. He lived independently, frequently stopping at Panera after his shifts at a supermarket, the legal complaint says. Because he had high blood pressure, he did not consume energy drinks, it adds.
Comparing it to caffeine per ounce, and saying “it’s just a little bit higher than coffee” is not the defense people think it is. I’ve quantified caffeine in drinks using NMR. Caffeine in coffee is a lot to begin with, out of all the drinks that we tested coffee was easily in the lead (with the exception of 5 hour energy drink that had 300mg per shot). And my biggest takeaway from the study was the incredible amount of caffeine that was in a simple cup of Starbucks tall coffee (upwards of 300mg). If we had tested the charged lemonade at the time, I would not have said “oh, it only has a little bit more caffeine than coffee”, instead I would have said “holy shit it has more caffeine than coffee”
I don’t drink caffeine, and I always work hard to avoid it. I keep track of which flavors and brands of sodas generally carry caffeine. If I were to drink an 8oz cup of coffee right now with “only” 100mg of caffeine it could very easily send me into a panic attack. Now imagine if I drank charged unknowingly, Probably would be drinking a lot more than 8oz if I thought it was just lemonade. The whole charged lemonade is just bonkers and Panera should have known better. They weren’t selling a drink. They were selling a supplement.
Except it is. People are trying to compare a 30oz drink to that if 8 to 12oz drinks. So it’s fair to being it down to a proper compatible value.
And there a decent amount of signage that the drink has caffeine. There’s certainly no way you’d order online from Panera and not see that it has caffeine. If you were there in person you would have to have completely ignored the sign that’s on the drink itself. And then chugged 30 oz of drink fast enough as to not notice the caffeine.
I have a fairly high tolerance to caffeine and even I can tell even after a single cup of coffee it’s effects, before I finish the first cup. So if someone has no tolerance for it I would have to assume you’d notice sooner. Well before downing 30oz worth.
We’ll see how it plays out. I personally think it was a bad idea to begin with but I probably have a bias do to my sensitivity to caffeine. I can see other people who are are used to it and who drink a lot of coffee not being able to see potential issues.