Curious why the US market drink (aka Energy+) is double the amount of caffeine (200mg) than the Daily A-Z sold elsewhere – that amount really seems unnecessarily high especially as the packaging design makes it almost illegible on the Pineapple & Mango and at best, very discreet on the other flavours, what that content is. Surely caffeine content that excessive should be very clearly labelled to avoid any incidents similar to those that the likes of Panera had with their high caffeine drinks.
200mg is very standard in the US
It would depend on the energy drink volume – the average in the US is 10mg of caffeine per fl/oz – similar to the levels in a can of Red Bull – the size of this serving is nearly double that average.
I realise that the FDA regulations and labelling requirements are different to those in Europe (this drink would be illegal in the EU) but as a health brand, I would have thought this would have been more clearly labelled.
So this is a US-specific product, something to rival the likes of Celcius, Monster and Red Bull!
Energy+ contains 200mg of caffeine per serving, which is about the same as two cups of coffee.
In regards to the clearly labelled, we do make sure that the contents of the can are clearly stated for those to see
Not sure reversed out text over an illustration, tucked into the collar of the can is ‘clearly stated’….
The two cups of coffee thing is always a little disingenuous – sure if you made a couple of cups at home, but not if you got them from a coffee house.
It might be stated but I wouldn’t say that is easy to read.
Yes, if a good dose of caffeine is a selling point it would be better if that were made more prominent. Two cups of coffee sounds good, one is never enough.
200mg caffeine would make this an instant buy for me if it also includes l-theanine?
Appreciate the feedback on this!
It does! But remember this is a US specific product
Bring it over here then
Course, energy drinks don’t have the same luster in the UK, would likely work against you quite hard if you competed with the likes of monster et al.
Shame though.
Not going to happen any time soon - Daily A-Z is already at the upper limit of Caffeine content in energy drinks in Europe and l-theanine is also not permitted in drinks if it is from a synthetic source or fermented (pretty much all of it in use in energy drinks as the naturally occurring sources are 20 x more expensive to produce than synthetic ones).
Oh really, I had no idea.
The real question is… is the Blue Raspberry drink blue, red or purple?
'Cause I wanna drink purple A-Z
Coming back to this… so are Huel knowingly selling a product in the US that would fail European food safety regulations, just so they can compete with energy drinks?
Well it’s an odd one as, while the energy drink market in the US is huge – the market for very high caffeine products is much smaller. There is only one brand that is remotely doing well or growing in this area which is Celsius. Although it’s the third most popular drink, its market share is tiny – 5.93% - while Monster and Red Bull dominate with over 70% between them. Full transparency – I’ve also started using Celsius as a prework out drink for two main reasons – it has zero sugar and compared to the purchase and delivery cost of Daily A-Z to my neck of the woods, it is 5 x cheaper.
While I object to energy drinks being consumed on a regular basis on a moral level (the types like Red Bull and Monster etc), in fairness to this point, they are selling a product which has been designed to meet and compete in the country in which its sold. Whether that same product would be banned in the EU is irrelevant, and whether it’s “safe” or not is a matter for the USA regulator.
Huel powder for example isn’t permitted in Canada due to some (from what I know) antiquated laws, so I wouldn’t expect the version sold in the UK and EU to be sub-optimal because of Canada. If Huel ever does launch in Canada, I expect it to be a bespoke version for Canada.
The fact Huel are now producing high caffeine energy drinks given its roots in nutritional powder based food is a different moral discussion.
yeah - it’s mostly down to semantics and some pretty strict limits on vitamins, protein, fats etc.