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Panera adds warnings about caffeinated lemonade after suit over student’s death
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Yeah it's unfortunately not a very well known fact that drip coffee typically has a MUCH higher caffeine content than e.g. espresso drinks.
Googling tells me drop coffee has 60-125 mg per cup, which is much less than the 390 mg this drink had. She was probably expecting at most 125mg in the drink.
That 390 mg is in 30 oz, but your 60-125 mg per cup is per 8 oz (8oz = 1c). The lemonade is 13 mg/oz, while your coffee would be 7.5-15.6 mg/oz. The lemonade has the same amount of caffeine as coffee, just like their menu boards state.
Same as I said in another reply: The thing is, most people are not going to be calculating by amounts like that. If you see a drink labeled as having as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, most folks are going to the serving size you are getting has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, not that it has the same amount of caffeine per fluid ounce - that the 30 oz lemonade has the same amount of caffeine as a 8 oz cup of coffee. I know that’s what I would have assumed based on the picture of the display in the article. Panera needed to have stated very clearly how they were measuring this - one of the linked articles said the woman never even drank energy drinks, so I bet you money she wouldn’t have ordered this had it been labeled more clearly exactly how much caffeine was in.
It is not labeled "as much caffeine as a cup of coffee", it is labeled with the amount of caffeine per size on the individual dispensers and "as much caffeine as our dark roast coffee" on the big menu boards. For someone with a caffeine sensitivity, that means either it's non-zero and you shouldn't have any, or you know your tolerance and should find out exactly how much. Never assume.
A "cup" of coffee is typically an 8 oz serving. You need to look at it per volume to make an accurate comparison.
https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-caffeine-database
In mg/fl oz:
Coca Cola is 2.8 (Diet Coke 3.8)
Mountain Dew is 4.5
McDonald's drip is 9.1
Red Bull is 9.5
Charged Lemonade is 13
Tim Hortons brewed coffee is 13.5
Chick-Fil-A brewed coffee is 13.6
So, this lemonade isn't actually that far away from comparable drip coffee, however, I am not sure whether the nutrition facts on the 30 oz charged lemonade is going to be inclusive of ice or not. Fountain drinks typically assume a "standard" amount of ice in their calorie projections, or you will see a calorie range on their menu to accommodate the spectrum of "no ice" - "extra ice"; if the 390mg of caffeine that they give for a large charged lemonade is for a 30 fl oz with no ice at all, then a standard amount of ice could bring it down into a more reasonable territory, but...
The thing is, and something I think folks aren’t figuring, is that most people are not going to be calculating by amounts like that. If you see a drink labeled as having as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, most folks are going to the serving size you are getting has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee, not that it has the same amount of caffeine per fluid ounce - that the 30 oz lemonade has the same amount of caffeine as a 8 oz cup of coffee.
I think we more or less agree. The comparison to coffee is valid per volume, but that's not a mental math step you are likely to take if you're not thinking about it very hard.