Family sued after Sarah Katz died last year after drinking Charged Lemonade, apparently unaware of soda’s high caffeine content
Family sued after Sarah Katz died last year after drinking Charged Lemonade, apparently unaware of soda’s high caffeine content
What if she asked the cashier, “do you have lemonade?” And the cashier said, “yes.” And then she ordered a lemonade. If you went to a restaurant and ordered a lemonade would you expect it to have 390 mg of caffeine added to it?
Counter-point: It is the duty of the person to know what they are consuming, though, not the other way around. If we gave every customer at every restaurant a full encyclopedia of what, how, where etc everything that goes into their product, ‘fast food’ would serve like 50 customers a day.
People need to educate themselves, especially when things are going into their bodies. Same as stepping into a street blindly and assuming ‘this cannot possibly hurt me’.
I think that there are some items that have become rather established. I feel like I should be able to go to any restaurant in the English speaking world, order a BLT, and know exactly what I’m getting without having to look at a menu. If they handed me a bologna, leek, and turnip sandwich I’d be a little miffed.
From time immemorial lemonade has been lemons, sugar, and water. I just can’t blame someone for ordering a lemonade and expecting to get lemons, sugar, and water.
I want you to understand that I 100% get where you’re coming from though. Ultimately this will go to court and a jury will be presented all the evidence, which we may not have, and they’ll render a verdict.
There’s nuance, right? Like, it’s on you to know that beer has alcohol in it. It’s reasonable to assume that hard cider that’s sold alongside beer and liquor will have alcohol. It’s also reasonable to assume that the seltzer that’s sold near the rest of the seltzer doesn’t have alcohol in it. But if it says it’s “hard” seltzer, there’s an argument to be made that you’ve been warned that this seltzer is alcoholic.
But “charged” is not a standard term to denote caffeine, and this lemonade is not nestled between coffee dispensers. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the lemonade that you order doesn’t have caffeine, because lemonade doesn’t normally have caffeine. If you ordered a root beer and got something with alcohol in it, would you say the same thing about being aware of what you’re consuming?
But this isn’t just ‘lemonade’, and the fact that it is not advertised nor sold as just ‘lemonade’ should clue people in. If I offered a meal as the ‘shotgun burger’, would you not stop to think ‘huh, I wonder what that’s about’ before consuming it?
This shit looks like lemonade to me. If I’m not specifically looking for the calorie content, I’m gonna filter out that caffeine content just like everyone else. A few hours later when I get the jitters, I’m never gonna be able to trace it back to that small yellow text on a green sign that I didn’t read because I’m not avoiding calories.
To your other point. I probably wouldn’t question it, because burgers typically don’t have alcohol or caffeine in them. Here’s a better comparison: you go to a restaurant you’re unfamiliar with and order the “Jacked BLT.” Does that sound like a marketing word, or a description of what comes on the sandwich? Because I would bet most people would order that sandwich expecting bacon, lettuce, tomato. I expect most people wouldn’t expect six scoops of vanilla protein powder, even if it says it comes with that in the fine print next to the nutritional information.
So your argument is ‘I don’t expect it, so it doesn’t happen, but even if it does, it’s not my fault for not reading’? Where else do you get lemonade with ‘coffee extract’? I mean the sign doesn’t explicitly say ‘hey dumbass there’s an assload of caffeine in me’ but with the numbers at the bottom there should be something about it that gives you pause. You have to stand there and fill your drink anyway, why are you not reading during those few seconds?
I am the annoying patreon who asks the waitstaff a bunch of questions to know what I’m ordering, so I’d definitely be like ‘wtf is this funky blt on the menu’. I’m a fatass, but at least I know what goes in my gut before I introduce the two. Ima die early but I’m going to know why I’m dying.
Raise the average bar, be smarter, read what you are consuming.
Now where is my damn vanilla bean creme frap?!
I feel like I explained better in this comment. The average person simply doesn’t pay attention to nutrition labels, because 99.99999999% of the time, it’s useless information.
Because I’m watching my drink to make sure it doesn’t overfill. This is totally absurd, nobody fills up a drink from one of these dispensers without watching the cup. You don’t fill up your drink without watching the cup. I know you don’t, because you’re a relatively normal human being who doesn’t want to spill lemonade all over the place. The fact that you brought this idea up shows that you aren’t interested in having a real conversation, you’re only interested in voicing the opinion you’ve already formed, even if it means talking absurdities to justify it.
But again, that’s their problem, not mine for being educated.
The world should be designed about people who read, yes. Glad we cleared that up for you.
Your drink does not immediately overflow, and even if you have a small cup, surely you turn to face the dispenser and approach it before you fill your drink. If your drink is immediately being filled as soon as you see the dispenser, you may be a wizard.
But to justify reasons to not be educated, especially something as reading a sign is both hilarious and horrifying to know, because I always knew they were around, I’ve just never met one until now.
Yes, but I wouldn’t expect it to be x amount more than coffee if I noticed the caffeine part, as the numbers don’t mean anything to the layman.
To their credit, the layperson should know that 390 mg of caffeine is a shitload of caffeine. Most people don’t, unfortunately. The problem here wasn’t that it wasn’t clear how much caffeine was in the drink, but rather it wasn’t clear that there was caffeine in the drink, and there’s so damn much caffeine in it.
A few weeks ago my flatmate mentioned the caffeine pills he’d been using, said he had one every couple hours that day. “It’s like as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.” 200 mg per pill. He’d had four pills that day. Not medically dangerous since he’s in good health, but it still kinda scares me how people don’t take caffeine doses seriously.
We should know more, but, we should also have controls in place so that people cannot screw themselves over to the extent where they may even die. Regulations are good things a lot of the time; allowing anyone to order or imbibe such an amount without warning is mad.
200mg is about as much as a cup of coffee if you drink your coffee in a big mug, like many people do. Obviously not a “standard” 8oz cup (but who drinks 8oz cups of coffee?) But 4 of those is too much, even if you’re the kind of person for whom it’s tolerable.