this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Man dies on way home from Panera after having three “charged” lemonades (arstechnica.com)
submitted 11 months ago by Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml
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Panera, formerly Panera Bread.

This is THE SECOND person who died from drinking this.

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[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Limit one per customer. Easy.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So I can't order several for friends? That sucks.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Multiple people are dead.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And? Maybe those people shouldn't drink stuff with tons of caffeine in it. Do you also want to restrict sales of energy shots at grocery stores?

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't want to "restrict" them, like some kind of law or something.

I'm just pointing out that they could, as a business, stop people from killing themselves with their product. "Buyer beware" just externalizes the burden of safety onto customers, and will absolutely result in more deaths. They could stop this from happening.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

My understanding from other comments ITT is that the company posted warnings after the first incident. If they continued despite that, that's on the customer. Preventing people from buying something that could hurt them (but most likely won't) is silly. Just label things in such a way that people should understand the risks, and then call it good (and perhaps have cashiers mention it as well if they order multiple).

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is a recreational drug and cashiers should be empowered to intervene for the health of the customer, no different from a bartender cutting someone off when they've had too much.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure, I just don't think it should be expected policy. Caffeine is a very safe drug, and it only really causes problems if you have other serious health conditions.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or if you consume extremely large amounts! Three lemonades is many many times the safe dose.

Like, at this level I think hallucinations become possible lol

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Sure, but three is also many times less than the legal dose, which is something like 150-200mg/kg of body mass (Wikipedia article). According to Panera, their lemonades have ~150mg caffeine. Again from Wikipedia:

[Caffeine overdose] typically occurs only after ingestion of large amounts of caffeine, well over the amounts found in typical caffeinated beverages and caffeine tablets (e.g., more than 400–500 mg at a time).

So 3 of these drinks is right in that range of the upper limit of what's reasonable, and each is about the amount in a typical energy drink (Red bull has 80mg/can, Monster has about 160mg/can). That doesn't sound excessive to me. Sure, three is a lot, but that's still not enough to cause problems unless you already have significant health risks. So as long as they have signage saying how much caffeine it has in a way customers can visualize, I honestly think that's fine.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A large lemonade contains up to 390 mg of caffeine. That's more than two Monsters.

Three lemonades is a six pack of Monster in one sitting. That's 1080 mg. What am I not seeing here? That sure seems lethal to me!

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Let's assume the person is 50kg (low estimate), a lethal dose is 150mg * 50 per day, or 7500mg. Three lemonades is merely 2x the point where caffeine intoxication starts, so I'd expect the following symptoms:

According to the DSM-5, caffeine intoxication may be diagnosed if five (or more) of the following symptoms develop after recent consumption of caffeine: restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushed face, diuresis, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, rambling flow of thought and speech, tachycardia or cardiac arrhythmia, periods of inexhaustibility, and psychomotor agitation.

And at very high levels of consumption (about 5x of those three lemonades):

According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), cases of very high caffeine intake (e.g. > 5 g) may result in caffeine intoxication with symptoms including mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, disinhibition, delusions, hallucinations or psychosis, and rhabdomyolysis.

None of those are life threatening, unless you have an underlying medical condition that makes you especially sensitive to caffeine. So three large lemonades would give you moderate symptoms, and those would likely go away within hours. The person in the article didn't die from caffeine overdose, they died from a heart attack, meaning they likely had significant health issues where the high caffeine load pushed their heart too far. If you'll notice, heart attack isn't one of the symptoms at all, even with a much higher caffeine load.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Huh, I guess he didn't have enough to hallucinate! Still enough to experience hearth arrhythmia, though, which can be dangerous (and was fatal in this case)

I gotta be honest, I think he's stupid for doing this to himself.

I just don't believe stupid people deserve to die.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Nor do I, but I also don't think we should restrict everyone just because of some stupid people. As the saying goes:

If you make something idiot-proof, someone will just make a better idiot.

Put up sufficient warnings, perhaps warn them verbally before purchase, and then let people do what they want, provided it won't hurt anyone but themselves. Obviously there should be exceptions for when someone is impaired (e.g. a bar), but if they seem to be of sound mind, let adults make their own stupid decisions.

I don't expect a cashier to know that someone could die when purchasing their product, nor do I think the business is obligated to do anything more than warn when it comes to relatively harmless products like caffeinated beverages.