Sarah Katz, 21, had a heart condition and died hours after she drank Panera’s Charged Lemonade, a large cup of which contains more caffeine than Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined.
All Panera Bread restaurants are now displaying “enhanced” disclosures about the restaurant chain’s highly caffeinated lemonade, a spokesperson said Saturday, following a lawsuit that was filed by the family of a young woman who died after drinking the beverage.
Monday’s lawsuit, which was first obtained by NBC News, alleges that Sarah Katz, an Ivy League student with a heart condition, died after she drank Panera’s Charged Lemonade last year.
A large Charged Lemonade contains 390 milligrams — nearly the 400-milligram daily maximum of caffeine that the Food and Drug Administration says healthy adults can safely consume.
There’s caffeinated lemonade and then there’s ‘10 mg away from the maximum daily recommendation of caffeine’ lemonade.
You can order a smaller size if you’re worried. The lemonade isn’t particularly highly caffeinated, it’s the cup size that is excessive. The lemonade is 13mg/oz, an average coffee is 12mg/oz which means a lot of coffees are higher, such as Starbucks coffee at 20mg/oz. Espresso is 50 and “energy shots” ten times that.
I definitely think labeling should be more explicit on presence of caffeine across the board (not just tiny text on a container). A limitation of size to 16oz (half the current size, same as a grande at SB) would also avoid the “supersize” effect here. But the lemonade itself isn’t really the issue imo.
Supposedly you would need to knock back anywhere from 10-25 of those back to back (4-10g dose) for it to kill you… But people have died intaking significantly less caffeine.
Considering the average person won’t know which end of that spectra they’re on until they get there, it’s not a risk I’d want to take.
Apparently the woman who died had a caffeine sensitivity. She shouldn’t have been having any caffeine.
I suppose the question would be then was she ever aware it had caffeine in it at all?
I’ve never been to a Panera, so I don’t know how they advertised that lemonade.
https://www.fixturescloseup.com/2023/07/23/energy-charged-lemonade-dispenser/
That page, from a few months ago, has pictures. The signs clearly list the caffeine content.
Sucks that she died, but it’s pretty clearly labeled, and if you have a sensitivity, you need to be checking these things if you aren’t familiar with them.
Speaking of having sensitivity, jfc.
Having the drink available in the soda fountain next to normal drinks is overall a bad idea both for kids and unknowingly customers (also ~400 calories for a lemonade is madness). The adjective “charged” doesn’t make me think “with caffeine”, it should be called caffeinated/energy lemonade in big font like redbull does, not with some abstract marketing adjective.
4g is 10x the safe daily limit, you are putting yourself in danger well before that.
Yes - which is why I specifically said “for it to kill you”
You would experience a range of other symptoms, some quite severe, way before reaching your lethal dose - but those wouldn’t kill you, at least not outright.
Problem is there is quite the high deviation in calculating what that lethal dose is for the average person, and given that people have died intaking significantly less (as I said), testing how many of those you could knock back is not something I’d do personally or recommend anyone else try.
So get a medium instead of a large?