Health Wanted: Special Little Treats, Beverage Edition

The Episode

The topic: This week on Health Wanted, host Laurel Bristow and guest Amelia Lake, PhD, discuss popular beverages, their health impacts, and the effects of energy drinks on children's health. 

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The takeaway: It is important to pay attention to the ingredients in what you eat and drink and be a mindful consumer when it comes to advertising campaigns. But, generally, enjoying an occasional special treat drink in moderation is fine.

• Studies have shown that drinking coffee may offer health benefits including reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers. However, once you add in sugar and flavorings, the health benefits may be negated. Alternative milks have become very popular recently, but they are not all healthier options. Many contain added sugars and flavorings and often lack essential vitamins and nutrients found in dairy milk.
• While a typical cup of coffee has 100-200 milligrams of caffeine, many energy drinks have 160-300 milligrams. Small amounts of caffeine can boost your mood and make you feel more alert, but adults should not have more than 400 milligrams per day. Too much caffeine is especially dangerous for children. Children under the age of 12 should not consume any caffeine, and those aged 12 to 18 should not consume more than 100 milligrams.
• The combination of high caffeine levels and other ingredients in energy drinks tends to affect heart rate differently than caffeine alone. This combination may lead to increased risk of cardiovascular problems, seizures, gastrointestinal issues, dental damage, and mental health concerns.
• Beverage companies are great marketers, and increasingly, brands like Celsius and Poppi promote themselves as healthy workout companions or sources of beneficial ingredients. While some new soda brands do contain less sugar, it can be difficult to know whether the additional fancy-sounding ingredients are present in amounts that benefit health.

The Interview

The guest: Amelia Lake, PhD

The key takeaways: 

• Energy drink cans have increased in size over time, leading to higher caffeine content per serving. People are also consuming more than one serving at a time. While one serving is generally considered safe, drinking too many energy drinks can have serious negative health effects.
• Most studies surrounding the effects of caffeine focus on adult men, and there is little evidence-based research on the long-term health effects of energy drinks on children. More research is needed to understand how ingredients in energy drinks impact children's health, growth, and development.
• Colors, flavors, fun designs, and influencers play a major role in attracting children to energy drinks and turning them into lifelong consumers. Energy drinks are the fastest-growing segment of the soft drink industry, and their sale generates significant profits for companies.
• Consuming energy drinks pose both physical and mental health risks to children. Many kids use these drinks to feel more alert, which can disrupt their sleep patterns. This is particularly dangerous for developing bodies and can negatively affect their mood and academic performance.

The Listener Questions 

The United States Department of Agriculture recently withdrew a proposal to reduce levels of salmonella in chicken. Is chicken still safe to eat? 

The proposal for a rule called The Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products was proposed by the Biden administration in August of 2024. It would have required labeling any raw poultry products with certain levels of salmonella or certain types of particularly virulent salmonella as “adulterated” and prevented them from being sold. It would also have created a routine framework for sampling and testing for salmonella and would have required slaughterhouses to develop systems to prevent contamination.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) noted that there’s been a reduction in salmonella detection in raw poultry, but that has not translated to a reduction in human cases, so they wanted to take a more assertive approach. The proposal was withdrawn by the FSIS, citing issues surrounding whether FSIS had the legal authority to make rules about final product standards and that it would be a financial burden on chicken processing plants.

Salmonella is one of the leading causes of foodborne illness, and salmonella linked to chicken is responsible for an estimated 167,000 infections each year.

It’s estimated that 1 in 25 packages of chicken at the grocery store is contaminated with salmonella, so it’s important to keep up safety and hygiene standards in your own handling of raw poultry. Make sure to always cook it through, wash your hands when handling it, and disinfect any surface it may have touched.

Infections are also more common in the summer, so remember to not leave your food out. The leftover chicken from the BBQ needs to be refrigerated sooner rather than later.

What is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new stance on animal testing? 

This change has been in the works since before Donald Trump was elected. In 2022, Congress passed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Modernization Act 2.0 which allowed for non-animal models to be used to support investigational new drug applications. Then, in 2024, the Science Board for the FDA made recommendations for how the FDA can encourage people to use validated “new approach methodologies,” which include non-animal options.

The program also aims to use research done outside the U.S. on the same products to help inform us of safety profiles, and if that research meets the same standards, then it could be a good way to cut down on duplicate work.

The system will be piloted on monoclonal antibody studies, arguing that animal immune systems aren’t the same as humans and therefore those specific drugs have a higher risk of animal studies being ineffective.

The plan is not to replace human trials; those will continue. This process could offer more accurate resources for predicting safety in humans other than testing through the use of animals.
 

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
• Subscribing on Apple or Spotify
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