Drink 1 has 80 milligrams of caffeine for every 237ml and is widely regarded as one of the most unhealthy things one can drink.

Drink 2 has up to 200 milligrams of caffeine for every 237ml and is considered to be a drink suited for sophisticated people and the “better option” in terms of health benefits.

If you read this and got confused, you’re not the only one. Society creates norms, such as tip culture and sports culture, which influence the way certain things are viewed and stereotyped by people. Food culture is one of these phenomena, especially in the United States. Certain food items become associated with specific groups of people and in turn get a bad reputation. When an adult watches a teen consume drink one, their mind instantly thinks of immaturity. They subconsciously lose trust and respect for that kid. Meanwhile, they hold drink two in their hand, sipping away, feeling old and wise.

You can probably tell what the drinks are based on the descriptions I've given, and you can probably tell where I stand on this topic, so I’ll set the record straight. Energy drinks are often demonized for how much caffeine they have. In reality, the caffeine content of energy drinks such as Red Bull is less damaging than the greater amount of caffeine in coffee to adults and, more importantly, youth. On average, the recommended amount of caffeine for a child is 100mg and for adults it is 400mg; this is significant because it means that one cup of coffee contains too much caffeine for a teenager’s brain, and an energy drink doesn’t.

One of the reasons that this is relevant to our school and its community is that you can often find students drinking caffeinated drinks of all types before tests, sporting events, and just for fun. Adults and parents at the school often discourage these practices, calling the amount of caffeine in energy drinks “bad for you” or claiming that consuming too much will “give you a heart attack when you’re older,” and these accusations are just simply false, and the detriments of the coffee that those same people drink are actually the same that they accuse your Red Bull of.

Energy drinks carry short- and long-term benefits due to the amount of caffeine that they contain. These include improved alertness, memory, reaction time, and focus. Coffee, on the other hand, contains enough caffeine that these benefits no longer apply, and instead, the effects tend to be extreme anxiety, nervousness, restlessness, and paranoia. So when someone drinks an energy drink, they receive benefits, rather than the detrimental effects of coffee.

So next time a parent tells you that your energy drink is “frying your brain” or that “you should be healthier,” tell them that you are actually helping out your brain by waking it up and allowing it to run better, and that the holy brown beverage that they can’t go one day without is the reason that they can’t go more than five minutes on the treadmill without going into cardiac arrest.