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Can someone explain why this is Panera Bread's fault?
390mg of caffeine on the lemonade. Who ever expects lemonade to have caffeine let alone 390mg? It's fucking insane. A can of coke has 35mg and thats enough to give me anxiety, sweats and tension. If I drank that thinking it was lemonade I would be fucked at another level.
To be fair that is frankly a ludicrous reaction for a healthy adult to have to 35mg of caffeine.
Thats not the point though, 390 mg is a lot even for a healthy adult.
On top of that, it wasn't labeled well at all. It sounds like they did not stat the caffeine content on the dispenser, but even if it did, not everybody has a good reference of how fucking much 390mg is.
It pretty much just looks like any other mundane nutrition facts. it doesn't call your attention to the amount at all or give any indication that 390mg might be high. I assumed it would be on the level of tea until I couldn't sleep at all the night after I had one (and I had it at like 2pm too, not even in the evening), and I still didn't make the connection until I later saw it in the news. I don't recall any other brand marketing using the term "charged" to indicate caffeine so I don't get people saying that everyone should understand that "charged" means caffeinated. "Spiked" and alcohol content sure, that's obvious, but "charged" is so vague.
Break it down on how much caffeine per ounce.
Because you're being intentionally dishonest with people acting like the lemonade and a can of coke are the same.
the 35mg of coke, comes in the 12oz can. The ~390, is from a 30oz drink.
Of the 3 flavors listed, none of them get to 390mg of caffeine, they all top out at 240 mg. But lets say it's unlisted now and the regular lemonade was 390 @ 30 oz.
You get about 100mg of caffeine from an 8oz of coffee.
Now before someone goes citing some different numbers, all levels of caffeine are subject to change will all sorts of variables, generally it's going to be lower, not higher.
So a can of coke is ~3mg of caffeine per ounce. A cup of coffee is 12.5 per ounce. And the lemonade is 13 per ounce @ the reported (but not listed on their website). If we go with the 3 flavors available, we get 8 mg per ounce.
So it's more than a coke, but around coffee. People need to stop acting like this is a small drink that is just packed with caffeine. Because the 30oz drink is effectively ~4 cups of coffee.
Just for kickers. Starbucks (because everyone knows that brand), sells a 30 ounce drink, the cold press, and it's listed at 360mg. https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2121255/iced/nutrition
So idk, maybe people could stop being disingenuous.
35mg caffiene shouldnt cause that
There is a reason I don't take caffeine
You mean 35 mg of caffeine doesn't do that to you. Food safety laws aren't written for the average person they are written for the more vulnerable.
35mg caffiene alone should not cause any notable symptoms to an adult that doesn't habitually consume caffiene who does not have any prexisting weight concerns or conditions. This was recently confirmed to me by an endocrinologist. It's about half of a latte. Being vulnerable would be the cause of the issue in your example, not the caffiene.
A can of monster has around 300mg per can. People walk around drinking those like waters everyday. The first death made national news. Then they put a warning label onto the product. AND they put a warning label on the drink dispensers. At that point if u manage to hurt yourself with the product despite all those warnings that's your fault. Its like saying we should beable to sue somebody who's selling coffee if they have a customer that drinks 10 cups in a morning and has a heart attack.
McDonalds was sued for their hot coffee burning a customer. They put lids with caution hot warnings on them and put it on the cups. After that all burns incurred are not their problem. Same case should apply here and likely will in court.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the issue is that the specific amount of caffeine was not originally disclosed - people with heart conditions would naturally exclude themselves from drinking energy drinks (which, although abused, should also NOT be drunk like water), but nobody would expect a panera bread lemonade to have that much caffeine.
The Mcdonalds lawsuit is an interesting parallel, because there is a lot of myth and legend around the specifics of the case. Mcdonalds are pretty unanimously regarded to have been in the wrong on this one AFAIK. Check out Legal Eagle's video on the topic here: https://youtu.be/s_jaU5V9FUg
Lemonade can have all kinds of shit in it. Some even have alcohol.
But I'm not defending these drinks at all. I think they are silly and harmful to teens and individuals who already regularly consume caffeinated beverages.
But I also don't see it as much different to highly caffeinated coffee sold regularly at popular coffee spots. And coffee is far more likely to be over consumed at home, at the office, at social meets, etc.
The only issue here is that the people consuming these drinks had health conditions.
Could Panera have done a better job marketing what this product is? Perhaps. I don't really know the answer to that, since people knowingly consume harmful amounts of food all the time without a care in the world.
I don't consume anything without knowing explicitly what it contains, so my bias tends to be that consumers also share some responsibility in finding out what they are putting into their mouths.
You know that coffee has caffeine, because coffee obviously has caffeine. You don't know that lemonade has caffeine, because lemonade doesn't have caffeine.
Alcoholic lemonade is an established thing. "Hard" is an industry standard term meaning "alcoholic." It's why you find hard cider, hard lemonade, and hard seltzer near the alcohol.
"Charged" is not standard. Have you ever heard of charged cider? Charged seltzer? It's not a thing. To be sure, I googled "charged cider," and found one result. It is not caffeinated cider.
Panera is 100% at fault for both deaths. They need to discontinue sales of this drink until there are massive warning labels stating that a 30 oz cup of it has more than the daily recommended limit of caffeine. Putting it in tiny little letters next to the calories is not enough, clearly, because two people have died from it.
They never disclosed how much caffeine/sugar was in the drink till after the first death. Too much caffeine can kill you.
I don't think that's true. In an article on Today published before the first death, they mention that "Though Panera declined to comment to TODAY.com, it posts nutritional content on signage and at drink dispenser stations in-store and at its drive-thru menu. Online and in-app, nutritional facts are posted on each of Panera’s menu items, and note when an item contains caffeine as well."
The FDA also notes that 400mg is totally safe, and in fact, most regular coffee drinkers consume more than that on a daily basis.
The issue is that someone with a known health condition (both deaths), consumed a product they shouldn't have been consuming in large quantities. And they had previously consumed the same drink on multiple occasions prior, so it's hard to claim ignorance.
Because they sell what looks and tastes like normal lemonade, without any safeguards to make sure you don't accidentally drink four times the daily recommended limit in one sitting. The signs display the caffeine content in small text next to the calories, which you and I both know that nobody who doesn't count their calories reads. It's called "charged" lemonade, in small yellow text on the green sign. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that the lemonade in that lemonade dispenser is normal lemonade.
But why hold them accountable? Starbucks wouldn't be in trouble if you drank 90 oz of coffee!
Coffee obviously has caffeine, it's the kind of inseparable from the concept of it. Same goes to a lesser extent with many sodas–anyone who has to watch their caffeine likely knows that coke and doctor pepper have caffeine. But lemonade? Who sells caffeinated lemonade? I guess G-Fuel does, but someone with a heart condition probably knows not to order G-Fuel.
Lemonade is the safe choice when you don't want caffeine, because to my knowledge nobody (besides Panera bread) has ever sold caffeinated lemonade out of self-service dispensers.
So it's Panera's fault because people refuse to read? How does that make sense? Hard lemonade is a thing and it has alcohol. Like if it's not labeled as regular lemonade (it's not, it's labeled charged and tells you it has caffeine, same as hard lemonade tells you it has alcohol), why would you assume it's "regular" lemonade?
Because you buy Mike's Hard Lemonade from the beer section of the store and have to show your ID to prove you're 21 and old enough to buy alcohol. They don't put it out by the sodas.
In fairness, I see non-alcoholic beer and wine are sold alongside alcoholic ones, too. The same goes for non-dairy foods in the dairy section, nut-free food in the nut spread section, gluten-free food next to gluten-containing food, etc.
Also, would you be outraged at a restaurant (or office) if someone drank too much self-serve coffee and was harmed by that consumption? Not even regular coffee drinkers are informed about how much caffeine they're consuming in a day, and when they do know the amounts, they don't know what it means. It's not on any beans or ground coffee I've ever purchased, and many people drink in excess of 400 mg of caffeine per day on a regular basis.
It's up to the customer to know what they are consuming, including through inquiry if the information is not available. From all accounts, Panera did have information clearly available in several places, and it was not the first time both of the people who died had consumed that lemonade.
As a reminder, both deaths were related to known health issues, and as tragic as they are, Panera would have no idea who's "at risk" or not.
It's Panera's fault because they refuse to make it clear. The only way you can look at the sign displaying the flavors and the caffeine content and notice the caffeine content is if you've already decided that Panera is right and you know that the sign shows caffeine content. Every single person I've shown the picture of the sign to who isn't already familiar with these incidents could not tell me how much caffeine was in the drinks after I took my phone back from them, because putting it in tiny low contrast text next to the calories is not a sufficient warning.
If hard cider was sold alongside regular cider, and didn't require an ID to purchase, and was 150 proof, then a hard cider brewer might get in trouble if someone died from drinking it.
The allagation is that Panera did not adequately communicate the contents of the lemonade.
I'm assuming he used a self-serve drink station, as I believe all Panera Bread's have.
This is how it would look:
This was from another report:
"The lawsuit filed in Delaware disclosed that Brown had ordered Panera’s charged lemonade at least seven times over the course of two weeks in September and October. It also disclosed Brown's medical conditions, including high blood pressure, developmental delay, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a chromosomal disorder causing a mild intellectual disability and blurry vision. The lawsuit said Brown believed the Panera charged lemonade was safe since it was not advertised as an energy drink."
Now, if Brown has a "mild intellectual disability" and a "developmental delay", and "blurry vision", is it not possible that he simply couldn't read or understand what the contents of the drink were?
Even the sugar, which I'm sure everyone knows is in lemonade, would have exacerbated his high blood pressure, yet he had THREE (upwards of 2.5L worth in a short amount of time!)?
"The lawsuit alleges that Panera "knew or should have known" that the charged lemonade could pose risks, particularly to children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and individuals sensitive to caffeine."
Unless he was tricked or forced into drinking these, I don't think that the lawsuit will be successful. Had he died consuming the food they served in moderation, there could be settlement. But even that would a stretch to win since he had a health condition that Panera Bread (or each different employee) wouldn't be aware of, or responsible for.
Because the beverages were poorly marked. People don’t assume lemonade has caffeine, especially energy drink levels of caffeine.