Not exactly what you would expect to see in a chemistry professors office, right?
I don't know why not. We're looking at a bunch of chemicals here mostly ethanol
in this one and a whole batch of chemicals in here. Now first a disclaimer:
I have never in my life tasted this particular beverage. I have
never tasted Red Bull. Why are we talking about it? Well, we're talking about it
because a question has arisen about the wisdom of mixing a beverage that
contains caffeine, which is Red Bull, with alcohol. Why? Because of a possible cross
reaction between caffeine and alcohol. Well first a little bit about Red Bull.
What is it? It is called an energy drink. What does I really mean? Well on
scientific terms energy really refers to the calorie content of a beverage, but
they're using it in different context. They're using it...sort of it can rev you up
and it's supposed to rev up your mind, it's supposed to rev up your body. How so?
What are the real ingredients in here: there's a great deal of sugar, at least
as much sugar as you would get in a soft drink, so we were talking about 40 grams
of sugar or something like that, there's also caffeine the amount of
caffeine is roughly equivalent to what you would get in a big cup of coffee,
then there's some taurine. Now taurine is a biochemical that is found in in humans,
it's found in in in animals and as far as I know when I looked at all the studies,
it doesn't have any energy producing benefits. Why is it put in there? I
suspect because this chemical was first isolated from bull bile and bull well
bulls are strong so this is supposed to create an image of strength, you know
strong as a bull. So they put in taurine. There are also some B vitamins but they
don't give you any extra energy so the real energy they're talking about here
is is caffeine. Alright, well what about alcohol?
The mixing of caffeine with alcohol, that could conceivably be a problem because
caffeine of course is a stimulant whereas alcohol is a central nervous
system depressant so it is very, very possible that someone who mixes a
caffeinated beverage with an alcoholic beverage will not feel as drunk as they
otherwise would because the caffeine keeps stimulating them. Okay,
well anyway I said I've never tasted this thing before so what we're looking
at here is a world first as you can see I don't even know how to open properly.
Alright so we've got some red Bull here so sugar, caffeine, taurine, B
vitamins. Here's our chemical experiment first time ever.
Doesn't really stimulate me to drink any more. Maybe if you put in a bit of alcohol.
Of course we're talking about a little bit and we're not talking about a lot of Red Bull. In fact, it says
on the bottle do not mix with alcohol, which of course to many people says "yeah
let's go out and do that." It also says limit one drink a day of of Red Bull. Alright
so what about this combo? Yeah, I don't drink on the job.
Neither should you. And always be careful about the amount of alcohol that you
drink I don't think that mixing a little bit of Red Bull with a little bit of
vodka is any great risk but doing more than that potentially is but I still
wouldn't worry about drinking an Irish coffee when it comes to St. Patrick's Day.