Tuesday August 16, 12 - 1 pm: The Truth Behind Energy Drinks

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Midday-Energy Drinks-8-16-11.mp3

A clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics warns that energy drinks --  Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar and many others -- should be off limits to children and teenagers because they contain high levels of caffeine and other stimulants. The AAP report says energy drinks often get confused with sports drinks, and that the beverages are generally understudied and overused. Sales of energy drinks are expected to approach $9 billion in the U.S. this year. What are the true contents of all those slickly-marketed energy drinks that get college students and truck drivers through the day and night?  We offer an in-depth look at these mass-marketed products, what's in them and whether they help or harm.

Our guests:

• Marion Nestle is professor of nutrition and public health at New York University and author of several books on food, including 2002's Food Politics, 2007's What To Eat; she is working on another book about calories.
• Angela Ginn Meadow is a Baltimore-based registered dietician and personalized diabetes coach.
• Cecile A. Marczinski is assistant professor of psychology at Northern Kentucky University and co-author of "Acute Effects of a Glucose Energy Drink on Behavioral Control," a 2010 report for the American Psychological Association.
• Dr. Herbert L. "Skeet" Muncie is a professor of family medicine in the Department of Family Medicine at Louisiana State University and affiliated with the International Food Information Council.
• Kathleen Miller, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the University at Buffalo; her research has associated frequent use of energy drinks with binge drinking, social problems and misuse of prescription drugs.