There's a new round of radio spots for Five-Hour Energy, and one part disturbs me: "People choose Five-Hour Energy over 2.5 million times per week." Really?
Anytime I've seen the television commercials for Five-Hour Energy, I've thought, Does anyone actually buy those?
The answer is, obviously, yes. Maybe it's only 500,000 customers drinking one each day. Maybe it's 2.5 million people drinking one per week. Either way, it's too many.
The thought of taking a shot of something to boost my energy strikes me as unhealthy and unnatural. It also reinforces the suspicion that the American Way to fix something is to try everything except the proven answer. (A perfect example is the $35 billion we spend on diet mumbo-jumbo every year. Yeah, we'd rather spend a fortune on pills, patches, and programs that don't work than do two free things for life-long results: change our eating habits, and exercise.)
I've never understood "energy drinks"--my one experience being a Jagerbomb (Red Bull with a submerged Jaegermeister shot)--and every time I see a promotion for a new one, I marvel at the idiocy of people who disregard its lack of nutrition, its high price tag, and its horrible scent and taste (if Red Bull is representative of the quality of energy drinks). When I was moving from Chicago to Miami, my brother and I stopped often at gas stations to fill up our coffee mugs and swallow yellow-jackets (caffeine and ephedrine), and I noticed a marked difference in my body. Sure, I was awake, but it was a rigid, edgy wakefulness, probably not the ideal state for making a long drive. It seems that energy drinks are a subdued version of this and probably become cumulatively damaging.
Here's a tip from me to you, Energy-Drink Consumer.
Whenever I'm feeling low in energy, I deduce that I need one or more of the following:
Anytime I've seen the television commercials for Five-Hour Energy, I've thought, Does anyone actually buy those?
The answer is, obviously, yes. Maybe it's only 500,000 customers drinking one each day. Maybe it's 2.5 million people drinking one per week. Either way, it's too many.
The thought of taking a shot of something to boost my energy strikes me as unhealthy and unnatural. It also reinforces the suspicion that the American Way to fix something is to try everything except the proven answer. (A perfect example is the $35 billion we spend on diet mumbo-jumbo every year. Yeah, we'd rather spend a fortune on pills, patches, and programs that don't work than do two free things for life-long results: change our eating habits, and exercise.)
I've never understood "energy drinks"--my one experience being a Jagerbomb (Red Bull with a submerged Jaegermeister shot)--and every time I see a promotion for a new one, I marvel at the idiocy of people who disregard its lack of nutrition, its high price tag, and its horrible scent and taste (if Red Bull is representative of the quality of energy drinks). When I was moving from Chicago to Miami, my brother and I stopped often at gas stations to fill up our coffee mugs and swallow yellow-jackets (caffeine and ephedrine), and I noticed a marked difference in my body. Sure, I was awake, but it was a rigid, edgy wakefulness, probably not the ideal state for making a long drive. It seems that energy drinks are a subdued version of this and probably become cumulatively damaging.
Here's a tip from me to you, Energy-Drink Consumer.
Whenever I'm feeling low in energy, I deduce that I need one or more of the following:
- restful sleep
- more fuel
- better fuel
- exercise (yes, expending energy begets more energy)
- medicine (occasionally, people are actually sick)
