Setting: Choprah! 4D television show, live, interactive multiverse broadcast. 6.29.18; 1 June 2010.
Choprah, show host: “Good evening everyone and welcome to this special episode of my show. Tonight we are talking about the BIG topic of energy drinks and shots. Joining me will be our resident health expert, Dr. Desmet Joz. And as with other interactive multiverse broadcasts, you—the viewers and listeners—can participate as if you were a member of the audience here in our live studios. And here’s Dr. Joz!”
Desmet Joz, MD (greeted by thunderous applause): “Choprah, thank you so much. What a great audience—here in the studio and via 4D interactive. WOW! I’m sure ALL of you listening and viewing have yourself, or know someone who has, ingested an energy drink or shot. They are ubiquitous. But what are they and what’s in them? They often contain the usual suspects like taurine, an amino acid, B vitamins, and glucuronolactone. This last one is a mouthful and when added to a beverage—or water—it turns into something called glucuronic acid. This “acid” actually may have a positive effect on the health and integrity of your joints. So far, not so bad, eh?.
“Energy drinks and shots often have sugar or some other carbohydrate—a calorie source. But if they are sugar-free and very low to zero calorie can they actually provide “energy”? NO! Energy drinks and shots provide a stimulant we all know—and some of us too well—caffeine. It is the most frequently used drug in the multiverse. But maybe you didn’t know that some energy drinks deliver up to 500 milligrams of caffeine in a container. Being a cardiovascular surgeon I know what caffeine can do all too well. It affects the heart, the blood vessels and the brain. Too much and you may appear to be a person with an anxiety attack. This can start to happen with doses as low as 200-500 mg per day. Any questions so far?”
Choprah: “Dr. Joz, we have a 4D communication from one of our virtual audience members. Go ahead, please.”
[Forty-something male, in a lab coat, appears in 4D image]: “Thank you, Choprah and Dr. Joz. I’m a psychopharmacologist here at The Meson Institute of Translational Biology. What I’m struck by, Dr. Joz, is your focus on energy drinks and shots in relation to caffeine. Yes, they all do contain caffeine but so does coffee, the most frequently consumed non-water beverage in the multiverse. What a viewer might take away from your discussion is that energy drinks are loaded with caffeine. What may be more important is to focus on our caffeine culture—not the energy drink/shot wave.
“We have shown, as have my Earthly colleagues at the University of Florida College of Medicine, that the caffeine content of specialty café brewed coffee greatly exceeds that of most energy drinks and shots. For example, the Earth group and my lab separately bought successive 16-oz. cups of StarCups coffee, over a period of five days. The range of caffeine per cup was 300-565 milligrams. On the high end, that’s equivalent to SEVEN Jedi Bull drinks—SEVEN. We also have performed biometric-linked purchase analyses at 142 StarCups stores this year and during the weekday hours of 3 to 5 pm, the average age of patrons buying a coffee drink was 20.2 years, with the range being 14 to 56. Coffee is a grossly underappreciated, potent source of caffeine and should be addressed in the same breath and context as energy drinks and shots. I’ll take your response off the 4D connection…Thank you.”
Choprah: “We’ll be right back!”