@@CDBIII if they had a sign warning about the caffeine level, it wasn't put up at the Panara by me, I checked as soon as I heard about the lemonade bc my first thought was "this is gonna kill someone"
@@jond.7382 that's a whole lie. I work there and for as long as I've been there, there's ALWAYS been a sign of how much caffeine is in it for the medium and large cups. I'm not defending them but they do have warnings.
I can't find a single energy drink that this has more caffeine then per ounce. Monster has 160 for 16 ounces, red bull is 111 mg for 12 ounce, Ghost has 200 mg per 16 ounce, Bang is 300 per 16 ounce. This is 237 mg for 30 ounce so it's lower than any other energy drink.
@@littlegirlshowSynch Maximum daily safe dosage of caffeine FDA approved is 400 mg so if you go drink one more anything that has any caffeine or if you have sensitivity then you go out of the safe dosage and it starts to show toxicity
I worked at a Panera and when these lemons were released and they always had the caffeine amount for 20 & 30 oz printed on the same label that tells you the flavor. Working there i realized a solid 80% of customers do not read any of the labels, unless that label was somebody else's food order. The lemonade were left in a spot with free access to it and cups. This lead to lots of theft of this product. I stopped or tried to stop many parents from allowing their kids to drink it. Most of them listened and thanked me. The ones that didn't listen just seemed to ignore me. I felt like the product was grossly mishandled and should have always been behind the counter to control access to it.
kids drinking this is a mini F5 tornado in the restaurant and for the next three days at home situation at best and death after 1-2 large cups at worst.
Yup, i drive for one of the commissaries, i deliver the bread dough, chips and produce (to franchised stores for produce.) Whenever I'm training a driver i adamantly warn them about the lemonade during our late nights.
The average person also just doesn't know how much caffeine is a lot. I hear 400mg of caffeine and I go "that sure is an amount of caffeine", I don't know that that's your entire day's maximum recommended amount worth. Sure, people who have to watch out for their caffeine intake for health reasons probably know, but your average normie could very easily just order two or three of these and be in trouble even if they DO read the label. The problem is the presentation. Red Bull and Monster have similar amounts of caffeine, but they sell themselves as "YAAAARGH YOU'RE GONNA BE HOPPING AFTER THIS, LOOK AT THESE CLAW MARKS ON OUR CANS!" - this looks like a lowkey, healthy drink. It's called "lemonade", the most inoffensive name you can give a drink after "water". People are going to assume it's not this massive caffeine bomb.
Seriously did you suspect people now days too fucking read labels and shit? Im your page as well like can't people read and shit now days i dont understand that shit at all on why people can't read labels and shit it seriously like dealing with 5 year olds 24/7 365 no matter where you go its irritating.
The craziest part of all of this to me is the fact that MatPat on Food Theory, like a year ago when it first came out, made a whole video based on the fact that this drink could kill someone
As someone who used to work at Panera, the first thing all my coworkers and I said when they launched these was that someone was going to die. They put them in the place where all the old non-caffeinated lemonades were, and had no indication of any kind of caffeine on the labels. Anytime someone would order one I would warn them of the caffeine content. Most people were shocked when I told them. The fact that they have a drink that’s refillable with more caffeine than an energy drink is insanity to me.
I feel like too that they'll try saying some bs like "Its called CHARGED lemonade tho!" is if that actually means anything. Charged could literally just be a marketing technique to make your product sound cool, it does not indicate something has caffeine.
I've been an employee there for 4 years now and my biggest issue at this moment is how the employees are being trained to handle this drink. We have one manager at our cafe who got the portioning ratio wrong for the lemonades which made it even MORE concentrated. He went on to incorrectly train 3 more employees this and nobody caught on for like 3 weeks. Any beverage that has to be hand-prepared should never be even close to a lethal dose, because human error happens way too often, especially for employees who get paid $10.
the consistency of standards was such a massive issue ten years ago in the WA region, acai berry be mold all the time if the good closers worked 4 on 3 off. >.>
My biggest question is why they decided that close to 400 mg of caffeine is what they want in ONE serving??? Why that high??? They should have labeled it as caffeinated regardless of how much was in there, I saw another commenter that ended up in the hospital due to drinking tea that "had so little caffeine in there the company was not legally required to label it as such". Wow such scummy behavior to hide that info from your customers... Legally or not it's still morally scummy. If I was a customer and I found out a store, restaurant whatever hides vital info from me like that you can bet your ass I would never go there again. I'm glad my lactose intolerance is not deadly and at restaurants I just have to ask, but thankfully most places do add info directly on the menu these days. And I'm also glad that a store has never tried to trick me, the stores I go to label it correctly with lactose milk /milk powder etc.
Even if I saw a "These are highly caffeinated!" sign I STILL would not have thought that they had THAT MUCH in them! That is three Redbulls per Charged Lemonade!
@user-uc7dn1oi8v That doesn't really matter when you take into account the fact that both are considered "one serving". A lot of people would happily drink a large lemonade in a single sitting, but would be horrified at the thought of drinking 3 redbulls in a row.
@@anonymous-wk1nh redbulls are low caffeine energy drinks per serving so most people would be horrified bc they hear redbull and dont actually know. Same people that would be surprised that something called "charged lemonade" would have a high caffeine content. As soon as I heard the name I knew it was an energy supplement.
How incredibly sad is to lose your father or husband just because he was happily trying to drink just a lemonade. This case gave me one of these strong moments of realization and empathy after so much desensitization.
I'm always mindful of what I eat and drink, so my wife wouldn't lose me to a soft drink from a fast serve place. She might lose me to kidney failure when I'm in my 80s because I eat a lot of red meat and potatoes as any real man should.
The worst part of all of this is the fact that Panera has a sip club membership in which the customer can get a free LARGE charged lemonade every 2 hours from open to close - a Panera employee
@chethanx666 yeah, but like adding that much caffine is the equivalent of adding crack to a recreational drug users supply, yeah they're not going to be here as long as others, but this expedites their death by an order of magnitude
As someone who worked as a cashier at Panera, I had to warn parents multiple times that the lemonade they were getting for their kids had caffeine in it. 9 times out of 10 they were horrified because they didn't realize what "charged" meant. Also, everyone who worked there was super loosey goosey about the ratio of charged liquid to lemonade. So how much of a caffeine punch you got changed with whoever was making it.
@@whale_why_not One of my co-workers would stop me whenever I made it to steal some of the charged liquid to make a more potent version for herself. Though even she wasn't reckless enough to just drink the stuff straight!
Some parents won't listen. Trust me, if you've ever been to a movie theater late at night, you would see a lot of kids running around, hyped up on sugar, and then the parents blame the corporation for the well-being of their own kids... Wouldn't surprise me if they gave them a sip of charged lemonade here and there... Sometimes, these kids treat the movie theater as their own McDonald's playplace, running up and down the halls, spilling stuff everywhere, making the workers lives a living hell, and these customers think that it's our problem to take care of their kids. I know it's unrelated, but just the point is, some parents just won't listen, until it's too late.
@@HerbieGundersonTMRioCollectornobody asked, parents still deserve to be told what's in the lemonade whether or not some random group of kids in an unrelated movie theatre were disciplined by their parents or not
this is incredibly sad because these 2 deaths could have absolutely been prevented. people were talking about this long before the deaths occurred and panera did nothing.
@@bland9876 no no i said panera did nothing as in they didn't take any action to make the caffeine content more clear. obviously they're completely in the wrong, and arguably responsible for these people's deaths
@@nola- it's only been one day and I can't remember how I was interpreting your comment the way I did. Anyways I totally agree that Panera is responsible for not making it super obvious how much cafeen was in the drinks and putting the dispensers behind the counter. What if a kid went up there and got multiple refills. Mom just thinks the kid's getting regular lemonade. "Mom why doesy heart feel funny?"
As a former employee, I’m unfortunately not surprised this has happened. Panera is a shady and misleading corporation. The food isn’t healthy, a majority of it isn’t fresh, and it’s insanely overpriced for the amount of food you’re getting. Hopefully, some kind of justice is served for these victims and their families.
I have extremely low opinion of Panera. To me their food tasted like hospital which is disgusting!! And as you mentioned very expensive I just don’t know why people eat there!
Justice ? 😂 Jesus Christ what happened to personal accountability? My generation truly sickens me. Get dead because you drank something your heart couldn't handle that was clearly labeled. I'm sorry but if you have a heart condition and you drank this without knowing what it was that's your fault . Panera ain't your mommy. There will be lawsuits but no money will be paid out because they did absolutely nothing wrong. The blame is on the dead idiots who drank it
as a panera worker, the amount of people getting these in LARGES is scary. I also fell into the group of "not knowing it was caffeinated" when i started working there, since I thought it was just pink lemonade. I was jittering for the next couple hours
Panera doesn't realize caffeine has different effects from person to person. Just like alcohol some people can handle a high amount well, others will be incredibly sick. A lot of people struggle with irregular heartbeat and other minor heart problems, they are at risk if they drink a large cup of this. not to mention people with actual severe conditions, pregnant women, older people, kids, people with anxiety or stress problems and so on.
I remember when the 21-year old passed. I read an article about it on a news-themed instagram account. I paid the comments a visit and I could not believe the amount of people saying “She should have known” was absolutely baffling. The ignorance of people who do not have to worry about every thing they are consuming is beyond me.
The delusion of some people to think that that dude rightly not being able to tell the ludicrous amount of caffeine in that “lemonade” is absurd. I bet every cent I own that those people didn’t even know about it before
@@tonypringles2285The average consumer would assume it would be as charged as the average cup of coffee or singular energy drink…. not multiple in a cup of lemonade; a beverage that isn’t normally caffeinated in the first place, which already puts out an assumption of what to expect from an innocent cup of lemonade.
@aslychair3096 The charged lemonade is legit just lemonade-flavored liquid caffeine. The average Joe can have like ten cups of coffee in a day and just drop dead, this charged lemonade situation isn't as simple as everyone thinks. Caffeine, like alcohol, is not a supplement you can just put in everything.
When i worked at starbucks I was damned sure to tell parents that the cool lime refresher had more caffeine that the java chip frap. Most parents didn't know and got their kids a lemonade in stead.
I've worked at a panera for some years and the moment we got the new lemonades, me and managers knew immediately it was an issue and we always warned our customers, especially ones with kids. I told them that my pre-workouts max dosage was not close to 400ml of caffeine which is pretty much your max daily dosage, and we just thought it was so crazy. Its super sad to hear about the deaths
I’m glad you guys tell your customers, as someone who’s caffeine sensitive and didn’t even know about the death juice. I’d prolly be dead or something… My condolences to the families.
don't forget to mention their food handling. ex. the soup, what isn't used by EOD is wrapped up and placed in a ice bath overnight in the prep sink. then reheated the next morning in the same plastic liner. ALSO the mac and cheese is heated in the microwave in plastic pouches in a plastic container. dunno if they changed any of that after 5+ years but very glad to not be working there anymore
The real issue isn't panera. It's the legal loophole that panera and others have used to advertise caffeine drinks as not energy drinks under the FDA. Besides sueing panera, people should be going after the FDA.
oooh. what a fire take if you aren't a bot. cuz like yes. The FDA, if this is the one that handles these kinds of audits, is overdue for its own audits.
Nah, Panera is also at fault. There is no excuse for selling something deadly that isn't marked just because the law doesn't make you do it. If the FDA got rid of a law stating you have to post if an item contains peanuts, companies would still be at fault if they don't post it because they know people could die not knowing there are nuts in it. It is the same here. It is insane not to mark things as caffeinated.
I agree. when I lived in Germany and spent a summer in Japan they both have tough health regulations concerned with deceitful advertising marketing and harmful products. So much American food is banned in most nations overseas because of the unsafe ingredients... we clearly have a problem and the FDA does jack shit about public health. The food in Germany and Japan is 1000% better tasting and I felt way better mentally and physically. The FDA is horrible due to under funding and corrupt lobbyist working for Big Pharma that help control what food gets regulated so I am glad someone else is pointing out the FDA. TL;DR FDA gave up trying. fuck big pharma
@@notnowhans Well I'm not too keen on the mg or grams of caffeine or sugar or whatever is in it in the regular "fruity" lemonades but I definitely know that they will make you feel worse if you get a refill or drink it a few times a week.
@@1faithchick7Caffeine related deaths always involve caffeine interacting with a pre-existing health condition. Both involved at Panera died during health events that were caused by underlying conditions with caffeine acting as a catalyst. Both of them had diagnoses for these conditions and specifically the girl with arrhythmia was fully aware that caffeine was dangerous for her to consume. 2. The drink's label read: Contains caffeine 32 oz. - 389mg. Meaning not only was caffeine labeled, but the massive dose has ALWAYS been on the drink fountains. Hate to side with the corporation but in no way are they morally at fault for either death, so hopefully legally it will be the same. Edit: for proof on the labels, go to Panera's subreddit and search up caffeine and find old posts. You'll find lots of pictures of the old charged lemonade labels with caffeine content CLEARLY listed.
Sarah was my cousin, and she was one of the smartest, most kind people I knew. She was very aware of her heart condition, and avoided caffeine. Seeing people blame Sarah is both disgusting and disheartening, and I am baffled that people aren't holding Panera more accountable.
so you’re telling me Sarah read the word “charged” in front of her lemonade and didn’t think anything of it? knowing she has a heart condition? yeah okay but Panera is at fault completely....
@@env.4118 No one's on high alert 24/7 expecting that a restaurant branding itself as healthy is going to sneak 6 espresso shots worth of caffeine in a lemonade, asshole.
i understand where your coming from to an extent but this drink in particular is dangerous due to the company not giving consumers proper warnings about the drink. Having too much of one thing can kill you eventually but i shouldn't be seeing the pearly gates just cause i drank 2 or 3 cups of what i thought to be a normal beverage.
MatPat did a video on this exact drink, he said it was insanely easy to misconstrue as regular Lemonade (being located in the “normal drinks/tea” section and minimal signage on its caffeine levels) and even hypothesized that was all on purpose. You’d drink the lemonade, get that unexpected boost of energy, feel good about it and attribute that feeling to the Lemonade, and all of a sudden you’re hooked. He showed a video of some girl who was legit addicted to them, having multiple a day. Honestly, I haven’t thought of Panera and those drinks since watching his video, but it didn’t surprise me at all to hear people have died from it sadly. It just seemed almost inevitable after watching MatPat’s video, and I think he even came to the conclusion someone might die or at least be hospitalized from it at some point. Hell, I wanted one before because I love lemonade, but happened to see MatPat’s video first lol I don’t drink much caffeine at all, so that would’ve blasted me into another dimension
They really didn't need to mislabel it and trick people. Energy drink junkies usually cycle through different drinks. This one would have been real popular with those addicts.
i drink caffeine i have to, cause i get caffeine headaches if i dont, but i dont drink it in large amounts anymore, but it wont ever make me hook on it
When I heard Charged Lemonade, I would have assumed it had as much caffeine as Starbucks refreshers or something, around a cup of coffee’s worth. Never would have expected pre-workout levels of caffeine. To me it just doesn’t make much sense to put that much caffeine in when like a quarter of the caffeine would still give most people a nice little buzz and would account for people getting a refill
Yeah they actually advertise it as "as much caffeine as a cup of our dark roast wakeup coffee!" not mentioning that their dark roast wakeup coffee (or whatever the actual title is) has an insane amount of extra caffeine added.
I have the same heart condition as the first person who died. I am told to be very careful around heavily caffeinated drinks, but could very, very easily have assumed the lemonade was safe for me. This shit is deadly and they need to lose a lot of money and get rid of it entirely. I am glad that this should hopefully bring some awareness not to the condition itself, but falsely advertising drinks with a shit ton of extra chemicals or whatever. RIP, and this is absolutely insane.
@tonypringles2285 But _how_ is it "charged?" What is it being "charged" with? And how much? It's the finer details to keep in mind when it comes to manners of ingredients, be it caffeine, sugar, nuts, etc. May not matter as to you, but it sure does to those with health restrictions, specific diets, or people who simply don't want to drink and excessive amounts of caffeine.
I had no idea what this product was until I saw this video, then I remembered I saw a video about it about a year or so ago. This girl who would go into Panera to work on her laptop said she would drink it not knowing how caffinated it was, but it kept her energized and helped her stay productive. But she eventually started realizing it was making her heart race, and she said that every time she drank it, it made her feel like The Hulk. So she looked up how much caffeine was in it and also agreed that it could've potentially sent her to the hospital had she not become aware of it.
oh yeah, that blonde girl that was already TWEAKING THE SHIT OUT like damn ive seen people on COCAINE tweak less!! If thats not an indication that the caffeine levels are dangerous I dont know what is, Panera is seriously in denial!!!!
its crazy how Food Theory broke down the dangerous levels of caffeination in Charged Lemonade months ago and Panera just continued with their practices
Exactly. When that video was released I thought they would have soon did something, or at least to better disclosure the amount of caffeine or just lower it down.... honestly sad to see this happen because it was completely avoidable if action was taken...
I almost got the charged lemonade, and i wanna say a massive thank you to the employee that asked if i was aware of the caffeine content. I have a few underlying issues, and cannot have caffeine. I dont even drink decaf coffee or tea, because i dont wanna take a chance of a mix up, and some brands still have caffeine. Long story short, im very vigilant about this kind of thing.I went to Panera for the first time in years, and I always get a lemonade. I dont recall seeing anything about it being an energy drink on the drive through menu, it couldve been there, but the menu has so many drinks and the writing is so small, I couldve missed something. I didnt think anything of the name "Charged", I thought it was an edgy new way to market citrus based drinks. On an average day, a can of pepsi is enough to put me in the danger zone. I was recovering from flu at the time so i was especially vulnerable. Im convinced that person saved my life. I know it sounds dramatic, but that amount of caffeine would no doubt, absolutely have put me in the hospital. I wish I had the receipt so i could get her name and send an email to her boss for her excellent customer service. Shes probably saved a lot of people from literal heartache.
I really hope this lawsuit leads to clearer descriptions on "energy" or extremely caffeinated products! I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine and hate energy drinks, and I can't count the amount of times I thought I was just buying a can of cold brew coffee when really it was coffee + energy drink.
That makes no sense at all. On average, cold brews have more caffeine than energy drinks. Your typical cold brew has around 200 mg per 16oz, while a Red Bull is at around 130mg per 16oz. 'I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine and hate energy drinks,' proceeds to drink a cold brew. Like, you can't make this up. People really have no clue what they put in their bodies and are just scared of the stigma energy drinks have.
Gotta agree with jbawg here. Not sure what you mean by cold brew + energy drink. Coffee has always had high caffeine content. It's just hard to put a number on the amount because it can vary so much based on the beans, the roast, and the brewing process. Cold brew (again depending on other variables) _can_ be significantly higher in caffeine than regular drip coffee. I love coffee and don't really drink energy drinks much, but I find it funny how energy drinks have gotten such a bad wrap for being loaded in caffeine when your average coffee shop drinks can easily have just as much, and oftentimes more, caffeine. I think one of the biggest differences between coffee and energy drinks is that people don't gulp down their coffee. Most people drink it slowly, so they aren't getting a huge hit of caffeine all at once. All this to say, if you're sensitive to caffeine, you probably shouldn't be drinking much if any coffee, especially cold brew. But if you can't give it up, at least drink it slowly, like you would if it was a hot cup of coffee.
I love Monster Energy, but that's because it has half the caffeine of other energy drinks. I don't usually drink it due to the energy it gives me but rather because of the taste.
There needs to be a lawsuit against idiots like you who have to have there little hands held through everything in life. It’s time to grow up and be a responsible adult mommy can’t hold your hand forever. Maybe know what you’re going to put in your mouth before you do. I mean you wouldn’t just grab a bar of poison and eat it unless you’re an idiot right why is that maybe because you asked what it was and didn’t just chew on it. Again grow up.
I remember a year or two back I’d ordered Panera online and seen that these drinks were new. I saw the “charged” label on them, and assumed they were caffeinated to some degree- like a Mountain Dew or something. But just to make sure, I checked to see the caffeine content. For context- I have a very low caffeine tolerance, and anything over 100 mg will make me extremely sick so I have to be vigilant. It was at the VERY BOTTOM of the nutrition facts which I had to go searching for- and I was shocked that something with that high of caffeine content wouldn’t have it stated front and center like it does on most energy drinks. I remember telling my parents that it seemed like a health hazard and I knew someone was gonna be hospitalized because of it sooner or later. I hate that things ended up the way they did.
I worked at Panera for a while and their advertising around the charged lemonade is shady as hell. They label it as having as much caffeine as a cup of their dark roast coffee when it actually has 4-5 times that amount. It’s insane.
Uhh a cup of dark roast coffee is 8 oz, 8oz of coffee regardless of roast is approximately 70-140mg per 8 oz. These drinks are like 30oz. Extrapolate = 30/8 = 3.75. 70-140 x 3.75 = 262 to 525mg of caffein. Their drink has about the same amount at the lower end at that oz per oz. Also you can look up their menu, it doesn't say cup. People are just negligent to not read when they order. The problem here is that people don't read and the drink is so easy to drink. The same reason why kids get beetus, sugary drinks are so easy to drink.
As someone who used to work for Panera, I can tell you this lemonade has to be incredibly addictive. We had people coming back multiple times in the store just to ask for more and would get angry if we didn’t serve them refills (since we could only give one per customer). One guy even threw his full drink at my co-worker because they didn’t serve him two. Weird as hell.
All this aside, the lemonade was the first thing ive ever tried at panera due to the sip club free trial, probably the best tasting lemonade ive ever had but the unfortunate thing is when you like something you tend to ingest it pretty quickly like any sugary drink and this thing made me feel like i was having a panic attack on the drive home.
@@superalientime3938 I used to drink it when I had to taste test them and honestly it was hella delicious. Only problem was after a few sips even from a water cup made me start shaking like crazy.
This is actually sad, seeing that this was covered by MatPat a while back. He went through everything that could happen if someone were to drink too much of it, and here is one of those possibilities being covered. :')
I worked at Panera for 6 years. We had to move the charged lemonades to the back because we saw people giving them to children. We are also required to tell people that it’s caffeinated and we did that as soon as it came out. It’s sad that this has happened and those cafes should be informing people about them being so caffeinated… Sad situation.
Yeah I was worried not only for those with underlying conditions but children too, and the probably very confused parents after their kids go batshit crazy after drinking a lemonade.
It has a huge label on it that tells you how much caffeine it has. The people who have died from it were drinking more than they should when they couldn’t handle that much caffeine. Every time I’ve gone to Panera the caffeine amount is on the containers and menu. In fact, the name is literally “CHARGED Lemonade”, are people seriously feeling this huge rush of energy and thinking “oh wow this is some fine made juice”.
So the store you worked at didn't have it listed as caffeinated? That's so weird because every one I've been to has it clearly listed in multiple places as highly caffeinated. Where was your store located?
My wife worked in leadership at Panera. She used to bring me these all the time, and even she didn't know how insane the caffeine content was. She still has the internal email to all Panera leaders regarding the "lemonade incident".
Panera isn't exactly a Michelin star restaurant. What did you expect? An ineluctable drink made with lemons harvested from the most fertile lemon grove in the world? Now you're acting like these Gen Z kids. Pay attention to what you put into your body.
@@RobbieStacks90 literally this. I worked at the number 1 Panera in the USA for years. They’re not right morally but they’re right legally. People need to pay attention to what they’re putting in their bodies.
@@RobbieStacks90Do I have to buy my lemonade at a Michelin star restaurant to prevent it from having lethal amounts of caffeine? Have some empathy, I'm sure you also have no idea about half the content of what you eat...
@@RobbieStacks90 Or, get this, the company could actually fucking discolse that each cup is like drinking 5 redbulls? Mayhe that? Maybe tell people what charged means? Cause if Panera show themselves as some healthy company and whatnot, people could think chafged means extra electrolytes in the drink or whatever is the best health thing to pedal.
I'm a former panera team lead, just quit last month. Quality control is also horrendous between store to store. My managers sold the pure non diluted charged lemonade for a month or so because they didn't know they were supposed to dilute it. Whenever I had to work cash, I always warned customers how much caffeine was in those drinks and they always changed their minds. Even us night shifters would dilute it even further for a good kick before a long closing shift, it was just so strong. A common criticism I've seen of the people who have died is that they should have paid closer attention to the labels, because there WERE labels, but they were SO tiny. They were basically fine print, and as a retail worker, I can bet all my money on the fact that the average american consumer does not read labels, let alone fine print, which is something corporate should have known and expected if they have any grasp of the demographic theyre marketing to.
I’m working at Panera for a year+ and then labels are not tiny at all people are just not reading and thinking it’s a regular drink. It’s an MLA format so there’s no reason why people shouldn’t read
actually, there has been research that shows that the average consumer doesn’t read things like warning labels/ other things in small print. in my risk assessment course at uni we just talked about how people don’t read safety labels. methelylene chloride was used as an example of this- people, including trained workers wearing a ventilator, were stripping the paint off bathtubs and dying from exposure to the fumes. it seemed that the directions weren’t in enough detail to fully understand how to use the product safely, as even those who had worked with the product many times were dying from using it. in response to the fatalities the manufacturer put a little picture of a crossed-out bathtub on the front corner of their product, with text stating some brief safety warnings that honestly blended into the background due to the thin lettering. the EPA has stated that they’ll be making some kind of ban to methylene chloride soon, but this is just one other case where preventable deaths occur due to improper labelling…
@@Darke-nebula it could be that your store put out different labels than mine, given that some regions receive different product + signage than others. Our labels were very tiny.
Caffeine overdose is no joke- i accidentally did it with chocolate with caffeine in it. It scared the shit out of me when I was having an attack. To not know how much caffeine you’re in taking and suddenly start having extreme symptoms is extremely scary. I feel bad for the families and victims where by this
I remember the first time I had Panera’s “charged lemonade” I assumed it was caffeinated due to the name but not THAT caffeinated. I got so buzzed I felt sick afterwards, and I drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day usually… but this shit backhanded me into the multiverse. Not sure why Panera felt the need to caffeinate it to this extreme. I will not be having one ever again.
@@HairyJuanthere’s nothing to dilute really. When I worked at Panera the lemonade was a syrup that we mixed with water, they tell you how much water you’re suppose to add and that was it.
You also have to consider that most people already routinely have coffee or an energy drink in the morning, so Imagine unknowingly adding 390mg of caffeine to what you've already consumed just because you wanted a fruity lemonade with your lunch.
There's also people like me, who can't have it not because it's acutely dangerous but because of mental health. If you're on lithium for bipolar, caffeine can counteract it. This would be like being off medication for at least an entire day, maybe two given the amount at its half life 12 hours later it would still be enough to make up an energy drink
@@mimblewait is that true ? 400 mg? I have a cup or two of deathwish coffee every morning which advertises something to the effect of 700+ mgs to a 12 oz cup
What honestly shocks me is that matpat made a video about this a while back and no one seemed to pay attention. My heart goes out to the families that lost their loved ones
I actually refused to touch it after that video. I typically start my day with at least one cup of coffee, I don't need to add my entire day's worth of caffeine in ONE drink after. I don't have any conditions, but after a number of dizzy spells a while back my doctor suggested cutting back on caffeine and I haven't drank more than one, sometimes two, cups per day since. What really gets me is that people swear it's these people's fault for being too stupid to realize a "charged lemonade" should be caffeinated. And I'm like. No! That drink holds _an entire day's worth of caffeine._ Well, now it's _almost_ a whole day.
@DeadfishKing Do you have evidence to backup your claim? I, and other people only know MatPat who is heavily associated with the FNAF franchise because of his theories and also the guy who attempted to eat a Christmas tree on Food Theory.
I remember Mat pat covered this over on food theory years ago. He basically implied that it was only a matter of time before someone died. Edit: I have lost track of time, so it was only about a year ago not “years”
I'll never understand why these fucking companies can't just be like "We have become aware that due to an oversight in the marketing of our new "Charged Lemonade" product, there has resulted a tragic loss of life. Our hearts and sympathy are with the families of those who were victim to this error, and we will seek to compensate them as best we can within the boundary of reason. In order to prevent this from happening again in the future, we will be notifying all Panera Bread locations to label "Charged Lemonade" appropriately as a highly caffeinated beverage." It would be so much less effort than fighting a drawn out legal battle and would do nothing but make the company look good in the eyes of the reasonable. People fuck up sometimes, admit, fix it if i can be fixed, apologize and try not to do it again in the future. It's really not that hard.
they can’t say that most likely because of the legal battle. To be honest it’s really not their fault. Anyone you see words like “charged” or “spiked” in the name you should at least look at the label to be sure. Also lots of people are implying the drink itself is dangerous when it’s completely fine.
This is insane. I actually used to study at Panera bread pretty often a couple of months ago. While there I would drink the lemonade because with a subscription you could get unlimited drinks. I would drink around 5 of these "charged lemonades" a day while studying. I remember I started getting really fast heart palpitations and my hands would shake uncontrollably while I was trying to study. All the while I had no idea about the caffeine content. One day it hit me that charged may imply that it had caffeine content. When I checked it turned out that each lemonade contains around 250 or so milligrams of caffeine. So I was consuming around 1000-1250 mg of caffeine each day. I really thought that I might have just been an idiot and never thought much of it until just now. Edit: I also have a minor heart condition so yeah...
How in the world did you not get hospitalized? Don't you think you would've caught on after the first time when realizing your hands are apparently shaking uncontrollably? That doesn't make sense to me.
@@ThatsTooUnreal I guess that makes sense. Still shocking you weren't hospitalized for all that caffeine. These losers are clearly not displaying the dangerous amount of caffeine in the lemonade properly at all.
@@SonicMaster519The lethal limit of caffeine is 5,000-10,000mg assuming you don’t have any underlying conditions. 1,250mg in one sitting is still very dangerous though.
Anyone can die from drinking too much caffeine. There’s been incidences of kids drinking several energy drinks and then dying. It’s just really shocking it only took one in this case, but any kind of heart condition makes the risk 10 times more or worse
I used to work at a Panera and remember when that stuff came out, we experimented with the syrup in like other drinks and stuff but yeah it's like super potent and Panera does a horrible job showing people how strong it is, even some of the cashiers would personally warn customers. I remember a lot of elderly people ordering it without knowing
As a Panera employee when the charged lemonades first came out we did warn customers about the caffeine contents of the drink, however the executives told us to stop doing that, really sad situation I do not stand by the company whatsoever but where I live it’s the only job I have the mental capacity to work.
I've seen so many Panera employees telling stories about how they knew this was going to be an issue, but you're the first one I've seen say that the execs said to stop warning people. That seems... really, really damning. I can only imagine that there will be testimonies like that in the trials, because it seems like everyone who worked there knew they were potentially dangerous.
It’s a shame because Panera bread restaurants are usually pretty relaxing and the food is pretty decent. Killing customers kind of goes against their chill vibe.
I saw the charged lemonade when I was at Panera a few weeks ago. I only kept reading the label because I was curious what “charged” meant. You had to read all the way down in order to learn it contained caffeine and how much. I was shocked at the amount. They probably shouldn’t offer free refill on it when one contains the daily recommended intake of caffeine.
The charged lemonade has 390mg of caffeine while the FDA says that the average, non-health adverse adult should only have 400mg per day before they begin to have side effects from caffeine intake. Its insane to me that they didnt label them and crazier is that these lawsuits dont include the judge just saying "wtf, pay up and fix that shit"
It's massive misinformation to say they didn't label it. It was labeled per size under every single flavor in larger bolder letters than the flavor description It had to be deliberately ignored. And that 390mg is in 30oz, nearly a liter of the lemonade. They aren't being made to fix anything because it was already well labeled and the people had to choose to ignore the labels to drink it
@@BryanMiranda96even with labels its unethical to sell something so borderline dangerous to consumers. Panera was kind of known for being a "healthier" style of food in general. They should know consumers are often unreliable about this kind of thing and it would be a huge liablity to try and be convinced that they'd know how much is TOO much. A lot of people really just try stuff without really reading or learning about it unfortunately. Alongside this please know that their major audience of consumers are young ppl who strive for that energy boost every morning. If they are part of their drink club i wouldnt be surprised if someone got two for a deal thinking it was a good idea..
The biggest issue is that someone who isn’t used to high caffeine intake or drinking energy drinks, can die from it and there’s no warning label in any way. As someone who used to drink charged lemonades every day for about a year and a half, it wasn’t that bad to me. The only reason why I stopped is because I wanted to reduce my caffeine intake.
As someone who used to work for Panera Bread I can confirm that the amount of sugar for the lemonade is ludicrously high and that they didn’t do much to try to lower it
As a normal guy, i can confirm that most restaurants have lemonade with a ton of sugar in it. Wouldn’t recomment anyone with sugar issues drinking lemonade. Anyone having such issues needs to make sure about what they are putting in their bodies. Restaurants here aren’t required to label such things and only the higher end ones got stuff listed, but even those not all the time. Especially with drinks. Some common sense would have helped on both sides to be honest. The restaurant shouldn’t have put it where they did on the menu and would have helped if they listed that it containes caffeine, but if you got issues with sugar and coffe and you see a drinked with “charged” in it, i would think you would at least question it, cuz that screams energy drink vibes to me.
@@LorandHungary I was there and the only thing we would put into it to try to alleviate the sugar is a like a bit of water but we would put in like 5 lemonade mixes for like a bit of water
Dude, those caffeine mg numbers are fucking ludicrous. I am a heavy, heavy caffeinated beverage enjoyer. Over 250 mg of caffeine in a single drink would have me pretty wired. 400 plus is extreme discomfort, cold sweats, insane jitters, borderline vomit inducing.
I studied negligence over this past semester in law school and I would love to see this case win because to me, all the elements of negligence (duty, breach of duty, causation - actual cause and proximate cause, and damages) are all pretty clearly met here in my mind. I feel so bad for these two victims. May they receive the justice they deserve.
How? It's clearly labeled and advertised as a energy filled lemonade. Theres a huge banner stating so over every station and has been that way since day one.
@@NoNe-u3v6r But what the hell is "energy filled" supposed to mean? That could mean anything from containing a lot of sugar, citric acid, or just an appropriate amount of caffeine. And if it is so clearly advertised as such, WHY ARE PEOPLE FUCKING DYING?
@user-iu5hc6ou8h The question that the courts will have to answer is whether there was sufficient warning. Some people are saying that there were signs everywhere and it was obvious the drink was caffeinated, others are saying that there were no signs and panera was deliberately hiding the caffeine content. I have seen no evidence either way, because people on the Internet love to make baseless claims to try and seem smart. The courts will decide whether there was sufficient warning, and if there wasn't they'll fine them for 1% of their monthly profits
@@NoNe-u3v6ras someone who went to a panera a lot a while back, they are NOT labelled as having caffeine. They just say “Charged lemonade”. I drank their charged tea not knowing there was caffeine in it. Honestly no wonder I had palpitations after drinking it.
@@mememaster695 Courts will rule in favor of Panera in both. They have the information posted correctly as they have to by law with the nutritional values, etc. This falls under menu labeling laws and if they have them posted, they are not liable. Especially when both individuals suffered from genetic medical conditions, where they should not be consuming anything that would aggravate the conditions. As well as the "charged" part of the name, it very clearly indicates its not a standard drink. While it sucks it happened, its not the companies fault. Its like blaming pre-workouts for having absurd levels of caffeine because they arent labeled as "energy drinks" or some sort of other ridiculous remark.
This is really scary because I'm someone who has some sort of caffeine intolerance that causes panic attacks. I can handle a mug of tea every few days but even a single mug of coffee ruins my day (stomach aches, panic attacks, and insomnia). If I accidently drank that lemonade, I genuinely don't know what would happen. My caffeine issues isn't tested by doctors so I don't know if its a serious issue or not.
When I got this at Panera, the employee warned me it had caffeine. There were signs on the window describing the content per size, and the signs above the literal lemonade made it very clear it was caffeinated. I noticed this at 2 different locations in louisville, and man was that shit caffeinated. If any of those steps were bypassed, yikes. Because it was tasty, and way easier to down than coffee or a carbonated energy drink
It wasn't. I live in the area where the first death happened. It's very obvious and the college girls friends admitted her parents lied about her never drinking anything with caffine and that she frequently was drinking stuff she knew she shouldn't bc tired and college. It's sad but it's not paneras fault ppl are ignorant.
Used to work at panera when it first started being sold. We were instructed we could not warn people that it had high caffeine because it affected sales. Not sure if they took this back later but that was the reason I quit, I'd imagine this has killed many others and just hasn't been linked to the deaths
@@rocketman3459idk if you’re lying just to lie, but i manage a Panera. Would like to know what panera you were working at bc that’s not true, at least in my region.
My mom was sent to the hospital after drinking this. The caffeine content in the app is hidden under two separate drop downs. Yes, it says charged, but nobody in their right mind would assume that a single drink would contain your daily limits worth of caffeine.
I had two cups of it one time, not knowing how much caffeine was in it, and I had my first panic attack that night. I never touched the evil lemonade again.
Rookie numbers. have a heart condition and I drank like 2 every day for a month, basically I became a live test subject I don't recommend it at all and now since then I've off caffeine for nearly 2 years, it honestly crazy like people should really try to stop drinking coffee you feel so much better once you never have cravings for it.
@@vortex_talon Unfortunately, you are correct. I'm kind of caffeine addict which I didn't think was possible until I went a day without having some and felt miserable. It's more addictive than you'd think.
Fun fact: I now cannot have any energy drinks bc of the charged lemonade. I had one, and the cartilage in my chest inflamed near my heart to the point where I had stroke-like symptoms. I felt like my right arm was giving out and my face went numb.
My girlfriend works at panera, and she told me before the two deaths that it had way too much caffeine and that someone is going to have a heart attack. The craziest thing is that even after the first death, all they did was add a little sign below the register, and on the machine, I swear she had to point it out for me to see it that's how small it was. I go there multiple times a week to pick her up, and one time I see two old ladies inside drinking the large size of the mango yuzu citrus or whatever at 9 in the night💀. She tells me they're supposed to tell the customers, but some of her coworkers are too lazy to tell them. They also used to leave it out with the fountain drinks so that anyone can drink some whenever they feel. Really stupid and tragic situation. Rest in peace to the victims and I wish the best for the family.
Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)
Just to put this into perspective: The charged lemonade drink at Panera Bread has 390 milligrams of caffeine One 12oz redbull contains 111 milligrams of caffeine so in 1 charged lemonade your getting the same amount of caffeine from almost 3 and a half 12oz redbull cans. The amount the FDA recommends you consume per day is 400 milligrams of caffeine as a healthy adult.
you're comparing a 12oz Redbull can to a 30oz lemonade tho, of course the number is gonna be bigger (BUT to be fair thered still be more caffeine if the lemonade was 1/3 the size)
The FDA has no control over how much caffeine people consume and cannot in any way hold people to 400 mg caffeine per day. The FDA, among other bodies, has RECOMMENDED 400 mg a day as safe. Obviously, this lemonade is not, has not been, and cannot be killing people without extreme underlying health conditions necessitating their caution in the first place.
@@theprismotic3765 Do you Gen Z kids not know how to make lemonade? It's simple. You go to the supermarket, find lemons in the grocery aisle, purchase them, throw them in a fruit juicer, and enjoy a nice cup of pure lemon juice. If you can't handle the acidity, you can add sugar to the drink. It's kind of like what you might do at a nightclub.
Simply having an unlimited drinks thing with effectively an energy drink (even worse than coffee where you kinda have to take your time and let it cool down, plus less caffeine content per drink) sounds like its begging to go wrong. Consider an open bar, but you don't throw up or black out, your heart just explodes.
I used to live off the charges lemonade during my first year of college and it is indeed a lot of caffeine. I once drank 3 of them cause of the stress as a freshman and it was not a fun time, thankfully I learned my lesson and don’t drink more than 1 if I can even stomach it in the first place. It’s hard to believe Panera can legally put that much caffeine into 1 drink, my condolences to the families who have suffered.
Yea this is why I think this story has some BS behind it. If someone doesn't drink caffeine at all, they're going to know something is up after drinking 300+mg
The idea that they're just casually selling a glorified Red Bull fountain drink with free refills is... kind of eerie. Like, one visit won't just give you wings; you'll be spouting wings out of every orifice in your body like a chaos spawn.
In the UK you can't even sell energy drinks to anyone under 16. Anything over 150mg of caffeine per liter has to come with a clear warning label like it's a pack of smokes. And we're just dispensing them from pitchers at Panera Bread willy nilly and calling it "lemonade".
As someone who WORKED at Panera, when the charged lemonades came out I wasn't even aware they had caffeine. I had one for the first time, only to realize I was bouncing off the walls. They do a terrible job at informing that they have caffeine.
Wow. If a customer specifically asks about the ingredients, and it's not posted, an employee HAS to know the answer or be able to get it quickly. Seems like negligence on their part.
As an employee of Panera, I can say I survived drinking 7 large charged lemonades over a long night. This is before I heard anyone died but wow did I feel like my heart was going to explode
I worked at Panara and we did have two signs that said the amount of caffeine in the drinks. One was a huge poster next to the menu and the second was a tiny sign right above the drink itself. However the tiny one was barely legible/easy to miss. The large one however we would have to switch for breakfast so wasn’t always there if the workers forgot to change the sign.
Same at the Paneras near me. It seems like it's an issue based on managers at certain stores. It's shown clearly it has caffeine on the menu from mine.
Same, that’s the confusion I’ve had, I get these occasionally and drink one over the course of a few days, but my local paneras had it fully marketed as high caffeine content and had clear information on the actual amount of caffeine. I guess what I mean is that I was shocked to hear this was happening because my local paneras had appropriate signage :(
I doubt those stores are any different. I think most of the people complaining about it have probably never been to a Panera shop and don't realize all the different lemonades have signs telling you what they are. @@5050TM
Fun story, a couple months back, I drank two servings of this without knowing they were caffeinated. It was right in the spot where the old lemonade machine was and I proceeded to gain the greatest headache and tremors I have ever felt. It subsided but I didn't think I was this close to death.
@@jonathanoloba7791 read what? "charged" lemonade could mean literally anything, probably not an extremely caffeinated beverage unless you had some knowledge on the drink in the first place. And it being right where the regular lemonade was is really shit placement
@-a-fox- first time I saw "charged" I Googled to see what it was charged with. I thought sugar but still I will look up stupid marketing terms instead of just rolling with it.
the fact that a drink with 390mg caffeine isnt being marketed as an energy drink (a can of monster energy has 160mg caffeine) is crazy. 400mg in a day is considered bad for you and over a thousand can be fatal to some people, so this is crazy
I'm one of the freaks that actually checks nutrution info and from my experience most energy drinks are 150-200mg. Higher caffiene drinks like Bang have 300mg, and even this is high enough that some people who drink energy drinks cannot tolerate it. Any more than that is nutty, especially for something not advertised as an energy drink. Even if you understand that the drink is caffeinated, there's no way most people would guess the sheer amount in the product
It's 390mg in a 30 Oz drink without ice. That's not really worse than coffee or energy drinks. Also the lethal dose of caffeine is way higher at >150mg/kg bodyweight. If a gram kills you you probably had a heart condition.
@@bcfuerst yes, that's why i said it can be fatal to some. most people wont die from a gram of caffeine, but thats about when people with heart conditions will start dying
there has been research that shows that the average consumer doesn’t read things like warning labels/ other things in small print. in my risk assessment course at uni we just talked about how people don’t read safety labels. methelylene chloride was used as an example of this- people, including trained workers wearing a ventilator, were stripping the paint off bathtubs and dying from exposure to the fumes. it seemed that the directions weren’t in enough detail to fully understand how to use the product safely, as even those who had worked with the product many times were dying from using it. in response to the fatalities the manufacturer put a little picture of a crossed-out bathtub on the front corner of their product, with text stating some brief safety warnings that honestly blended into the background due to the thin lettering. the EPA has stated that they’ll be making some kind of ban to methylene chloride soon, but this is just one other case where preventable deaths occur due to improper labelling… and even if there are labels they aren’t always specific, visible, and/or understandable enough.
A usual can of soda has around 35-45mg caffeine per can. Kickstarters usually have about twice this at around 80mg. Celsius and Prime have 200 per can/bottle, which is for reference, about 5 cans of soda worth of caffiene. The charged lemonade has about as much caffeine as a whole 10 cans of an average soda.
I worked at Panera for over a year and I remember always thinking that something like this was gonna happen with those lemonades. I'd even try to warn customers whenever they got it that they had so much caffeine.
The sad thing is that they probably did it on purpose as a lot of companies are starting to add caffeine to their products due to its slight addictive property just to get an edge up on competition
Caffeine doesnt make you addicted to a single item or restaurant. If youre addicted to caffeine, youre gonna be addicted caffeine no matter where or what it is. You dont fiend for a particular thing with caffeine in it, you fiend for the caffeine. And idk why companies decide to put caffeine into any drinks at all, if you need caffeine that bad they make caffeine pills. Its a drug at the end of the day, it shouldnt be put into everyday things we consume. But it also shows how much we as people dont care what we consume. You hear "Charged Lemonade" and think its a regular drink? Dont ask about it? Dont look it up? Yes it should be more open as to what it is and whats in it, but people also shouldnt be so ignorant that theyll consume whatever
@@arejayftp5956 your brain doesn't know it's addicted to the caffeine, only that you feel good and energized when you drink the lemonade. Yes, you could probably satiate the need elsewhere, but not if you don't even know that it's the caffeine that you like lol. That's why the original comment points out that it's intentionally put alongside non caffeinated drinks.
@@arejayftp5956 it won’t make it super addicting but there is a component to it that makes it at least a bit more desirable over time due to the caffeine in it
@@nottaibo To not know youre consuming caffeine is ignorant in this day and age. Most of everything that has caffeine tells you. And its not intentionally put next to the non caffeinated drinks, first of all thats not a thing, drink machines have normal soda/diet and a couple other non caffeinated drinks so idk how thats even an argument people are trying to make when mcdonalds and every other restaurants drink machines have caffeinated and non caffeinated drinks right next to each other. Second of all, its next to other lemonades which makes sense why it would be there. The fact someone can look at something called CHARGED lemonade and think its just normal lemonade without asking about it or looking it up is complete ignorance. What you just said would be the same as smoking crack and not knowing youre addicted to the crack. It doesnt make sense
I’m glad I didn’t die the summer they introduced unlimited sip club. I drank a lot of these lemonades, had severe anxiety, and my heart would randomly start racing. I switched to sparkling water and started feeling better, but at first I didn’t think it could be lemonade of all things.
When this was released I had just gotten to college freshman year. We have a Panera on campus, and as a promotion Panera gave a free month of something called an "unlimited sip club" for signing up for their app. This meant that you could get a free drink from panera every hour. One of the drinks as part of this program was the charged lemondade. I knew it had caffeine, but I never knew how much. Me as well as dozens of other students would be constantly getting charged lemonades, the biggest sizes too. I thought it was the same, maybe a little more than a cup of coffee. I've stopped drinking them since I found out how bad they were, the sugar mostly, but I still know people who have it daily. They really need to be clearer with the marketing, since we had no idea how much caffeine and sugar it had.
I work at Panera bread and we aren’t supposed to keep the charged lemonade by the regular uncaffeinated drinks after the first person that passed, we’re supposed to keep them behind the registers and they have warning signs on the container that the drinks are in, so these people of the family of the person who died recently could win the lawsuit against them because they weren’t following the rules they were supposed to be following.
My question is, why is Panera's response to add a warning label saying "Hey this might LITERALLY K*LL you" instead of just reducing the caffeine in it??
@@jesz97 Because anything can literally kill you. Drinking too much water can kill you, they're not going to label every single water bottle with "don't drink 10L all at once" or whatever. They're not going to label christmas cards or envelopes with "a papercut can kill you if it gets infected, handle with care".
Also the beverage machines used, sometimes will put out more of the packaged syrup mix through the dispenser so you don't know how much of the concentrate was added to the mix. That 390mg for the large, could've easily been 500-600 depending on the rare occasion.
Lmao yeah i think they also had rotten food inside the drinks and it tasted/smelled like leaving well, a lemonade outside in the heat for multiple days
I'm not sure if they still do this, but even Monster used to have a warning on the can that stated "limit 3 per day" and this is the energy drink brand notorious for being consumed by dudes named Kyle that punch holes in their walls and hate their stepdads. Why Panera wouldn't label their caffeine content like literally any other drink, even cola, is beyond me.
My local college had a Kyle story where he was litterally in psych class and the professor was telling him to not chug those and proceeded to then collapse in the middle of class. Thankfully not the one I was in it was a few years prior. That story is why I avoid energy drinks
Seems to be that the small charged lemonades have between 150-237mg per drink. Seeing that he had three, it can be guessed that he had 600-700mg. This isn’t enough to kill the average person, it will just make them sick, but seeing that he had underlying health issues, it’s not surprising. They’ve got to be labeled like any other energy drink, coffee, or pre workout.
237 mg is for a 30 ounce drink it says on their website. Also with the sip club there's no free refills, you get a free drink every two hours, so for this guy to get three he either stole the refills or he visited three separate times to get the largest drink size of an energy drink... They're clearly labeled as an energy drink at the store near me, there's a big high caffeine warning about them at the cash register and also at the drive thru, although it could've been different at the store this guy went to.
The biggest problem is that they're still calling it lemonade. When you hear lemonade you don't think caffeinated they need to call it something else and significantly reduce the amount of caffeine or better yet just take it off the damn menu
Regardless it’s still a lemonade. The biggest problem is people not being educated in food safety and not being area of how much of certain things people need. Proper education is the problem not the people misleading.
@@mrcreepypasta256A person shouldn't be able to slip up one day and then die because their lemonade had nearly enough caffeine to make a full grown adult suffer side effects.
That is actually terrifying! I had (have?) a heart condition and can't drink caffeine. I wound up in the ER from drinking 2 cans of tea that wasn't properly labeled as being caffeinated. Heart rate was 180bpm lying down. I asked the company the next day and they said "it has some but it's not that much so we don't have to say it's caffeinated" omg. I wanted to sue.
I worked for panera bread a few years back. We were required to slice off the crust/end pieces of certain breads and simply throw it away, so we'd end up with a large bin of bread crusts. We had homeless people occasionally stop by to ask if we had anything they could eat, and we were required to tell them no and shoo them away from the establishment. Really disgusting waste of food that we could be serving to local homeless people. It blew my mind how many bins of end-pieces of bread we had. I got fired eventually for reasons I won't disclose but minimum wage $8.40 for 9 hours a day doing multiple roles. Kinda insanity. Fuck this company. Always knew they were shifty.
@Mythinull and even if it were not illegal, it opens the company up to liabilities since the food was 'waste'. Any lawyer would be able to twist that into a 'they knew it was waste product and still served it'.
@@ArcticDrakejust that’s it’s wrong, crazy, unethical and anti human. Every restaurant does it tho, and they have for quite a while. McDonald’s toss all their extra food in a compactor that smushes all the food together then presses into a tight bale. This could actually be a good thing, food waste in landfills produces copious amounts of methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas and a rapidly increasing problem with a fairly easy fix, don’t trash food, spoiled or otherwise. Of course all McDonald’s throw it straight into the dumpster out back, which of course go straight into landfills. Compressing it like this actually makes for more methane production, it’s the ANAEROBIC breakdown that makes methane, if allowed it were broken down in open air it wouldn’t make much methane at all, but pressed tight and buried it’s guaranteed to make a ton. So it’s a nice double whammy! Allowing some people to starve today, and putting off lots of methane for us ALL to enjoy tomorrow… and next week, and next year… cuz it doesn’t break down and there’s no natural “methane cycle” (there is a carbon cycle, so it can naturally be pulled from our air and used). But at least no starving people will get a tummy ache from a hamburger that’s a few hours old… that’s reserved for paying customers
i knew immediately what the deaths were from. To put into perspective how horribly caffeinated these are, I consumed one large per day last year for about a week due to a show I was working on (I was working the equivalent of a 15 hour work day for 7 days straight) It was the only thing that kept me going on TOP of my prescription stimulants. I experienced some strange episodes of unexplained chest pain that week.
Now imagine how drinking 3 in one day felt for that dude 😢 My doctor frequently warns me to avoid caffeine use since I am prescribed stimulants. Never been a fan of mixing drugs.
Earlier this year, I tried the strawberry charged lemonade and I was hooked & shooked - not only was it pretty good it literally had me heart racing after 2-3 sips. I was genuinely worried for a sec because I don’t have heart problems, zero allergies, & I’m a young adult. I drink soda and I’ve NEVER experienced that feeling in my chest before. I drank it a few more times (over the course of about a month) before I stopped. My heart would always race every time I drank a charged lemonade. Surprisingly, I didn’t assume it was the drink at first bc: Who the fuck puts caffeine in lemonade!? I thought the word “charged” was an exaggerated hype term used to boost the sales of that drink. I had zero clue that it meant their lemonades contained caffeine (let alone so much).
As someone that knew those drinks were caffeinated based on the name and just assumption, I would've never thought they were that HIGHLY caffeinated. I would have NEVER guessed the level of caffeine was higher than most energy drinks and at the level of pre workout.. completely Panera's fault for not disclosing the level of it from the beginning.
Given how dangerous energy drinks already can be, idk who the fuck at Panera went "add more caffeine bro" and thought it wouldn't be reckless and dangerous. Why couldn't they just limit the caffeine to how much an energy drink has?
@@riott ur right and not considering the fact that no one’s getting refills of energy drinks or preworkout.. it’s kind of a one and done, getting these charged drinks refilled would be so bad for anyone’s heart.
@@sholem_bond the issue is energy drinks don’t have unlimited refills.. those lemonades are worse because without a thought you could finish a cup during your meal then refill it on your way out.. leading to potentially consuming almost 700mg of caffeine without even knowing..
@@berrymerry1141 yeah, exactly. and considering people probably aren't expecting to do much physical activity after going there means all that caffeine isn't even being used as intended.
I just will never understand why some random lemonade at a restaurant has more caffine than most energy drinks and pre workouts... let alone the other portions.
i remember when the charged lemonade was released while i worked at panera. whenever there were new menu options, everyone had to stay late or come in after the store closed so the employees could try all of the new items. One of the new items that year was the charged lemonade. i have pretty bad heart issues, and because of this i can’t drink or consume any caffeine. but no one told me that the new lemonade was fucking pumped full of it. everyone had a glass of it, and within 30mins my heart was racing. i remember thinking “oh i must be just having some bad anxiety or something” but oh boy i was wrong. an hour later as i was driving home i felt like i was gonna have a heart attack. i had to pull over on to the side of the road and eat something to balance out my system. thankfully, i ended up being okay, but i had severe heart palpitations for days after that. i wondered why it had happened, and couldn’t figure out what caused it. 4 days later when i went back in for my shift one of my co-workers informed me of the caffeine content in the lemonade and i was SHOCKED. i couldn’t believe that they weren’t openly displaying that the lemonade had the same ammount of caffeine as a damn energy drink. people’s kids would drink it and so would the elderly. i don’t work there anymore but i’m so thankful this is finally being talked about.
I have to say that personally i have a really crazy caffeine tolerance and have drank nearly 2,000 mg of it in the past for example and been completely ok but tbh reading these comments and hearing about how lots of people with heart conditions drank this lemonade because it wasnt labeled as highly caffeinated, im very bothered by the purely idiotic negligence of this panera company, even though some people like me love drinking highly caffeinated stuff, doesnt mean everyone is into it and certainly if people with serious health conditions aren't being warned about the risks of what they are about to put into their body it really makes me upset at this company because i have a hatred for this sort of thing, it's really scumbaggy decision making on behalf of a big company like this to just not inform people because somehow they are gonna very slightly increase their profits. Its not only stupid but it's completely reckless and absolutely wrong
thats insane. The max you can legally sell in pre-workout is 400mg of caffeine, and the FDA says you shouldn't have more than 400mg a day....so the fact this item is on the sip club is nuts. imagine buying a tea and it's a blasted preworkout drink.
I watched the Food Theory on this lemonade a while ago. Stuff has a criminally high amount of caffeine, higher than some marketed energy drinks. I have no idea how they are getting away with it, they're jumping through so many legal loopholes.
OK So. I worked at a panera bread for ages, was part of the primary staff that opened one here in WA, listen. do not order any thing like lemonade, tea, or soda at panera bread and get bottled drinks or espresso coffee only, they do not properly clean their equipment or tanks and you will get sick, I worked and helped open numerous panera breads in WA and knew about a sweeping issue in various places of the good ole usa, do not drink these things.
I can second this, there was only two people, myself included, that actually cleaned them properly. I also used to drink a charged lemonade while I was at work and more times than not I felt worse during my shift then i would’ve if I didn’t. Anyway it’s great to run into another old Panera worker lol
I had drank a large sized cups worth of charged lemonade and had a massive anxiety attack and at first didn’t even understand why I was reacting that way. But then I realized my heart was beating at a mile a minute and I felt freezing, that’s when realized I was basically having a caffeine overdose. I cannot stress how unassuming these drinks are too. They taste like normal lemonade if not better, there’s no warning label or anything, just a sign with the name, and the caffeine content written quite small under it. Please stay safe and don’t get this drink
That's because you don't read. The menu in all panera clearly states that the drink has as much caffein as their dark roast coffee and anyone with a brain can understand that it's an oz by oz comparison. Since 8oz of coffee is about 60mg-140mg and the minimum size of the drink is 20z that's at minimum 150mg of caffein.
@@hirotakasugi4891anyone with a brain wouldn't assume that they put so much caffeine on a drink that has a totally different function, and that they offer with large cups. That amount of caffeine is dangerous even for normal people with no cardiac conditions
@@shicox8364 What function does a lemonade? It’s a drink. It a vehicle for anything. Your argument is made by someone who doesn’t have a brain lol. Did you even think about what you just said? And if you’re ordering shit especially for the first time, aren’t you reading the menu? Cause I sure do. “Function of a drink so it shouldn’t have x” 😂
I was addicted to caffeine and my doctor advised me to either quit it all together by weaning myself slowly or limit my intake to one coffee once a week. I would drink a pot of coffee a day. With some espressos from the coffee shops on my lunch break. Caffeine is no joke. So is caffeine addiction. What I would drink in one day is LESS caffeine than that one lemonade. That’s insane.
@@zack-lk8ifSame man, guess I’m not caffeine sensitive or I’d probably be dead. At my absolute worst I was probably downing 600-800mg daily. Now I’m down to 200mg or less.
Christ. A single fluid cup of coffee every morning was enough to give me jitters, tunnel vision, headaches, stomach pain, and lethargy after like a week. I'm pretty sure the amount you had would kill me.
I remember when these first came out and I went to Panera and drank 2 larges bc I thought it was normal lemonade. I’ve never been more cracked out in my life. I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and I could barely breathe, and I drink caffeine on a regular basis.
One of the biggest issues with the charged lemonade is that its placed EXACTLY where the old lemonade was, not just next to the uncaffeinated drinks
For over a year (since the girls death) they had massive signs.
Now they are behind the counter (annoying).
And they had no caffeine label anywhere which is ridiculous. No amount of caffeine
@@jond.7382 this is not true. from day 1 the milligrams of caffeine were on the customer facing signage on the dispenser. from day 1.
@@CDBIII if they had a sign warning about the caffeine level, it wasn't put up at the Panara by me, I checked as soon as I heard about the lemonade bc my first thought was "this is gonna kill someone"
@@jond.7382 that's a whole lie. I work there and for as long as I've been there, there's ALWAYS been a sign of how much caffeine is in it for the medium and large cups. I'm not defending them but they do have warnings.
Gotta love when corporations “investigate themselves” and find “no wrong doing”
Right?
😭😭😭
It’s definitely an American regulation problem since they’re not required to give nutritional info like the EU is.
I've seen this happen with police departments. It's infuriating to say the least.
Like the police, we are currently undergoing an internal investigation....my balls
One thing I don't think Charlie touched on is that these drinks have MORE caffeine than actual energy drinks. That's insane.
The highest I've seen is 300mg in one drink, and it's still a bit much for me if I don't have any tolerance. 390 is fucking ridiculous.
I can't find a single energy drink that this has more caffeine then per ounce. Monster has 160 for 16 ounces, red bull is 111 mg for 12 ounce, Ghost has 200 mg per 16 ounce, Bang is 300 per 16 ounce. This is 237 mg for 30 ounce so it's lower than any other energy drink.
THATS BECAUSE THEY HAVE MORE LIQUID IN THEM, IT SHOULD BE BY THE FLUID OZ NOT THE TOTAL AMOUNT AS A COMPARISON
@@littlegirlshowSynch Maximum daily safe dosage of caffeine FDA approved is 400 mg so if you go drink one more anything that has any caffeine or if you have sensitivity then you go out of the safe dosage and it starts to show toxicity
@@loiloiloi6 uh...according to several articles its 390mg per 30oz 237 isn't even close
I worked at a Panera and when these lemons were released and they always had the caffeine amount for 20 & 30 oz printed on the same label that tells you the flavor. Working there i realized a solid 80% of customers do not read any of the labels, unless that label was somebody else's food order. The lemonade were left in a spot with free access to it and cups. This lead to lots of theft of this product. I stopped or tried to stop many parents from allowing their kids to drink it. Most of them listened and thanked me. The ones that didn't listen just seemed to ignore me. I felt like the product was grossly mishandled and should have always been behind the counter to control access to it.
kids drinking this is a mini F5 tornado in the restaurant and for the next three days at home situation at best and death after 1-2 large cups at worst.
Yup, i drive for one of the commissaries, i deliver the bread dough, chips and produce (to franchised stores for produce.) Whenever I'm training a driver i adamantly warn them about the lemonade during our late nights.
The average person also just doesn't know how much caffeine is a lot. I hear 400mg of caffeine and I go "that sure is an amount of caffeine", I don't know that that's your entire day's maximum recommended amount worth. Sure, people who have to watch out for their caffeine intake for health reasons probably know, but your average normie could very easily just order two or three of these and be in trouble even if they DO read the label.
The problem is the presentation. Red Bull and Monster have similar amounts of caffeine, but they sell themselves as "YAAAARGH YOU'RE GONNA BE HOPPING AFTER THIS, LOOK AT THESE CLAW MARKS ON OUR CANS!" - this looks like a lowkey, healthy drink. It's called "lemonade", the most inoffensive name you can give a drink after "water". People are going to assume it's not this massive caffeine bomb.
Seriously did you suspect people now days too fucking read labels and shit? Im your page as well like can't people read and shit now days i dont understand that shit at all on why people can't read labels and shit it seriously like dealing with 5 year olds 24/7 365 no matter where you go its irritating.
If you thought people in real life was dumb. Have you checked on the Internet on how many people are fucking dumb and super ignorant on the Internet?
The craziest part of all of this to me is the fact that MatPat on Food Theory, like a year ago when it first came out, made a whole video based on the fact that this drink could kill someone
Bro unfortunately called it
And everyone acts like he's crazy lol
I’m going to go watch this
Thought this was a joke I didnt know bro had a food channel too wow
@@Thisisadream17 Yeah, he has Game Theory, Film Theory, Food Theory, and Style Theory.
As someone who used to work at Panera, the first thing all my coworkers and I said when they launched these was that someone was going to die. They put them in the place where all the old non-caffeinated lemonades were, and had no indication of any kind of caffeine on the labels. Anytime someone would order one I would warn them of the caffeine content. Most people were shocked when I told them. The fact that they have a drink that’s refillable with more caffeine than an energy drink is insanity to me.
Thank you for being a good Samaritan and appraising customers of the health risks involved. You'll make a good wife someday.
@@RobbieStacks90 Bro get in line shes mine
the fact you said people were going to die as an assumedly low-level employee of the company says ALOT.
I feel like too that they'll try saying some bs like "Its called CHARGED lemonade tho!" is if that actually means anything. Charged could literally just be a marketing technique to make your product sound cool, it does not indicate something has caffeine.
@reaperraider999 idk if Charlie touched on it in the video (I'm half way through) but from what I've seen, they basically did
I've been an employee there for 4 years now and my biggest issue at this moment is how the employees are being trained to handle this drink. We have one manager at our cafe who got the portioning ratio wrong for the lemonades which made it even MORE concentrated. He went on to incorrectly train 3 more employees this and nobody caught on for like 3 weeks. Any beverage that has to be hand-prepared should never be even close to a lethal dose, because human error happens way too often, especially for employees who get paid $10.
They need to make it so that it has 100 Mgs, max 150, but that is pushing it.
the consistency of standards was such a massive issue ten years ago in the WA region, acai berry be mold all the time if the good closers worked 4 on 3 off. >.>
oh god i didn't even consider that the dosage might not even be consistent, that's really bad
Boost
My biggest question is why they decided that close to 400 mg of caffeine is what they want in ONE serving??? Why that high??? They should have labeled it as caffeinated regardless of how much was in there, I saw another commenter that ended up in the hospital due to drinking tea that "had so little caffeine in there the company was not legally required to label it as such". Wow such scummy behavior to hide that info from your customers... Legally or not it's still morally scummy. If I was a customer and I found out a store, restaurant whatever hides vital info from me like that you can bet your ass I would never go there again. I'm glad my lactose intolerance is not deadly and at restaurants I just have to ask, but thankfully most places do add info directly on the menu these days. And I'm also glad that a store has never tried to trick me, the stores I go to label it correctly with lactose milk /milk powder etc.
Even if I saw a "These are highly caffeinated!" sign I STILL would not have thought that they had THAT MUCH in them! That is three Redbulls per Charged Lemonade!
what the fuck, why do they even put so much in it
the sizes are wildly different, the large lemonade is 24 oz, so 3 redbulls makes sense
WHAT
@user-uc7dn1oi8v That doesn't really matter when you take into account the fact that both are considered "one serving". A lot of people would happily drink a large lemonade in a single sitting, but would be horrified at the thought of drinking 3 redbulls in a row.
@@anonymous-wk1nh redbulls are low caffeine energy drinks per serving so most people would be horrified bc they hear redbull and dont actually know. Same people that would be surprised that something called "charged lemonade" would have a high caffeine content. As soon as I heard the name I knew it was an energy supplement.
How incredibly sad is to lose your father or husband just because he was happily trying to drink just a lemonade. This case gave me one of these strong moments of realization and empathy after so much desensitization.
3 refills isn't just trying it
I'm always mindful of what I eat and drink, so my wife wouldn't lose me to a soft drink from a fast serve place. She might lose me to kidney failure when I'm in my 80s because I eat a lot of red meat and potatoes as any real man should.
@@bendover1106 It's not his fault he died because he refilled it, the blame should be put on the company
@@spizunit’s not really the companies fault atp, that dude was slurping em down like there was no tomorrow
@@RobbieStacks90 you got soft hands brother
The worst part of all of this is the fact that Panera has a sip club membership in which the customer can get a free LARGE charged lemonade every 2 hours from open to close - a Panera employee
If you're drinking sugary ass lemonade all day long, you weren't gonna make it to begin with.
@chethanx666 yeah, but like adding that much caffine is the equivalent of adding crack to a recreational drug users supply, yeah they're not going to be here as long as others, but this expedites their death by an order of magnitude
@@chethanx666 yeah we should just put aresenic in soda to weed em all out /s
fuck is wrong with you
I have it, its not a charged lemonade its a free fountain drink/coffee
@chethanx666 I mean yeah but that's a slow death in comparison to suffering from cardiac arrest one drink later...
As someone who worked as a cashier at Panera, I had to warn parents multiple times that the lemonade they were getting for their kids had caffeine in it. 9 times out of 10 they were horrified because they didn't realize what "charged" meant.
Also, everyone who worked there was super loosey goosey about the ratio of charged liquid to lemonade. So how much of a caffeine punch you got changed with whoever was making it.
Wow that last point is fascinating... I can't stop thinking about the "Charge" concentrate...like if someone just took a sip of that😱
@@whale_why_not One of my co-workers would stop me whenever I made it to steal some of the charged liquid to make a more potent version for herself. Though even she wasn't reckless enough to just drink the stuff straight!
Some parents won't listen. Trust me, if you've ever been to a movie theater late at night, you would see a lot of kids running around, hyped up on sugar, and then the parents blame the corporation for the well-being of their own kids... Wouldn't surprise me if they gave them a sip of charged lemonade here and there...
Sometimes, these kids treat the movie theater as their own McDonald's playplace, running up and down the halls, spilling stuff everywhere, making the workers lives a living hell, and these customers think that it's our problem to take care of their kids.
I know it's unrelated, but just the point is, some parents just won't listen, until it's too late.
@@HerbieGundersonTMRioCollectornobody asked, parents still deserve to be told what's in the lemonade whether or not some random group of kids in an unrelated movie theatre were disciplined by their parents or not
And the parents probably let the kids drink it anyways.
this is incredibly sad because these 2 deaths could have absolutely been prevented. people were talking about this long before the deaths occurred and panera did nothing.
Ah well, could have been three.
How did Panera do nothing wrong?
@@bland9876 no no i said panera did nothing as in they didn't take any action to make the caffeine content more clear. obviously they're completely in the wrong, and arguably responsible for these people's deaths
@@nola- it's only been one day and I can't remember how I was interpreting your comment the way I did.
Anyways I totally agree that Panera is responsible for not making it super obvious how much cafeen was in the drinks and putting the dispensers behind the counter. What if a kid went up there and got multiple refills. Mom just thinks the kid's getting regular lemonade. "Mom why doesy heart feel funny?"
@@bland9876 no worries lol, totally agree with you
As a former employee, I’m unfortunately not surprised this has happened. Panera is a shady and misleading corporation. The food isn’t healthy, a majority of it isn’t fresh, and it’s insanely overpriced for the amount of food you’re getting. Hopefully, some kind of justice is served for these victims and their families.
i only went there once like 5 years ago now
I have extremely low opinion of Panera. To me their food tasted like hospital which is disgusting!! And as you mentioned very expensive I just don’t know why people eat there!
Better not be Charged Justice...
Justice ? 😂 Jesus Christ what happened to personal accountability? My generation truly sickens me. Get dead because you drank something your heart couldn't handle that was clearly labeled. I'm sorry but if you have a heart condition and you drank this without knowing what it was that's your fault . Panera ain't your mommy. There will be lawsuits but no money will be paid out because they did absolutely nothing wrong. The blame is on the dead idiots who drank it
Why did they take away my chicken tortellini?!
as a panera worker, the amount of people getting these in LARGES is scary. I also fell into the group of "not knowing it was caffeinated" when i started working there, since I thought it was just pink lemonade. I was jittering for the next couple hours
Charged Lemonade isn’t caffeinated ? 😂no wonder you’re blue collar
@@warrioremperor6320Soulless drone. Have empathy. Show respect. Go touch grass.
@@hatboi124 Got triggered ?
@@hatboi124 "Soulless drone" - Guy spouting preprogrammed catchphrases he was fed by a social media algorithm, 2023
Panera doesn't realize caffeine has different effects from person to person. Just like alcohol some people can handle a high amount well, others will be incredibly sick. A lot of people struggle with irregular heartbeat and other minor heart problems, they are at risk if they drink a large cup of this. not to mention people with actual severe conditions, pregnant women, older people, kids, people with anxiety or stress problems and so on.
I remember when the 21-year old passed. I read an article about it on a news-themed instagram account. I paid the comments a visit and I could not believe the amount of people saying “She should have known” was absolutely baffling. The ignorance of people who do not have to worry about every thing they are consuming is beyond me.
The delusion of some people to think that that dude rightly not being able to tell the ludicrous amount of caffeine in that “lemonade” is absurd. I bet every cent I own that those people didn’t even know about it before
it is literally called CHARGED lemonade. if he couldn't guess it then it is his own fault
@@tonypringles2285The average consumer would assume it would be as charged as the average cup of coffee or singular energy drink…. not multiple in a cup of lemonade; a beverage that isn’t normally caffeinated in the first place, which already puts out an assumption of what to expect from an innocent cup of lemonade.
@ansowo666 If caffeine is gonna kill you, maybe do some research into what you're consuming.
@aslychair3096 The charged lemonade is legit just lemonade-flavored liquid caffeine. The average Joe can have like ten cups of coffee in a day and just drop dead, this charged lemonade situation isn't as simple as everyone thinks. Caffeine, like alcohol, is not a supplement you can just put in everything.
When i worked at starbucks I was damned sure to tell parents that the cool lime refresher had more caffeine that the java chip frap. Most parents didn't know and got their kids a lemonade in stead.
I've worked at a panera for some years and the moment we got the new lemonades, me and managers knew immediately it was an issue and we always warned our customers, especially ones with kids. I told them that my pre-workouts max dosage was not close to 400ml of caffeine which is pretty much your max daily dosage, and we just thought it was so crazy. Its super sad to hear about the deaths
I’m glad you guys tell your customers, as someone who’s caffeine sensitive and didn’t even know about the death juice. I’d prolly be dead or something… My condolences to the families.
mg*
don't forget to mention their food handling. ex. the soup, what isn't used by EOD is wrapped up and placed in a ice bath overnight in the prep sink. then reheated the next morning in the same plastic liner. ALSO the mac and cheese is heated in the microwave in plastic pouches in a plastic container. dunno if they changed any of that after 5+ years but very glad to not be working there anymore
That was my first thought about the preworkout thing.
@@carlosmatthews1910you suck dude
The real issue isn't panera. It's the legal loophole that panera and others have used to advertise caffeine drinks as not energy drinks under the FDA. Besides sueing panera, people should be going after the FDA.
oooh. what a fire take if you aren't a bot. cuz like yes. The FDA, if this is the one that handles these kinds of audits, is overdue for its own audits.
Nah, Panera is also at fault. There is no excuse for selling something deadly that isn't marked just because the law doesn't make you do it. If the FDA got rid of a law stating you have to post if an item contains peanuts, companies would still be at fault if they don't post it because they know people could die not knowing there are nuts in it. It is the same here. It is insane not to mark things as caffeinated.
I agree. when I lived in Germany and spent a summer in Japan they both have tough health regulations concerned with deceitful advertising marketing and harmful products. So much American food is banned in most nations overseas because of the unsafe ingredients... we clearly have a problem and the FDA does jack shit about public health.
The food in Germany and Japan is 1000% better tasting and I felt way better mentally and physically.
The FDA is horrible due to under funding and corrupt lobbyist working for Big Pharma that help control what food gets regulated so I am glad someone else is pointing out the FDA.
TL;DR FDA gave up trying. fuck big pharma
@@notnowhans Well I'm not too keen on the mg or grams of caffeine or sugar or whatever is in it in the regular "fruity" lemonades but I definitely know that they will make you feel worse if you get a refill or drink it a few times a week.
@@1faithchick7Caffeine related deaths always involve caffeine interacting with a pre-existing health condition. Both involved at Panera died during health events that were caused by underlying conditions with caffeine acting as a catalyst. Both of them had diagnoses for these conditions and specifically the girl with arrhythmia was fully aware that caffeine was dangerous for her to consume. 2. The drink's label read: Contains caffeine 32 oz. - 389mg. Meaning not only was caffeine labeled, but the massive dose has ALWAYS been on the drink fountains. Hate to side with the corporation but in no way are they morally at fault for either death, so hopefully legally it will be the same.
Edit: for proof on the labels, go to Panera's subreddit and search up caffeine and find old posts. You'll find lots of pictures of the old charged lemonade labels with caffeine content CLEARLY listed.
Sarah was my cousin, and she was one of the smartest, most kind people I knew. She was very aware of her heart condition, and avoided caffeine. Seeing people blame Sarah is both disgusting and disheartening, and I am baffled that people aren't holding Panera more accountable.
I’m sad to hear it. I hope she rests in peace and you and your family are okay
Sorry for your loss, this is an awful situation and I hope they are held accountable.
so you’re telling me Sarah read the word “charged” in front of her lemonade and didn’t think anything of it? knowing she has a heart condition? yeah okay but Panera is at fault completely....
@@env.4118 No one's on high alert 24/7 expecting that a restaurant branding itself as healthy is going to sneak 6 espresso shots worth of caffeine in a lemonade, asshole.
@@env.4118a human being is dead and you are laughing.
Drink 3 charged lemonades.
MatPat even made a theory video on this and even said it could kill people, crazy and sad that it still happened
Womp Womp
drinking too much water or eating too much of any food can also kill you
I can't think of ANYTHING that exists and has zero potential to kill a person
i understand where your coming from to an extent but this drink in particular is dangerous due to the company not giving consumers proper warnings about the drink. Having too much of one thing can kill you eventually but i shouldn't be seeing the pearly gates just cause i drank 2 or 3 cups of what i thought to be a normal beverage.
@@amon6413 I'm the Alpha Male
@@ILoveBakugousShlongbro is trying his hardest to get attention 💀💀
MatPat did a video on this exact drink, he said it was insanely easy to misconstrue as regular Lemonade (being located in the “normal drinks/tea” section and minimal signage on its caffeine levels) and even hypothesized that was all on purpose. You’d drink the lemonade, get that unexpected boost of energy, feel good about it and attribute that feeling to the Lemonade, and all of a sudden you’re hooked.
He showed a video of some girl who was legit addicted to them, having multiple a day. Honestly, I haven’t thought of Panera and those drinks since watching his video, but it didn’t surprise me at all to hear people have died from it sadly. It just seemed almost inevitable after watching MatPat’s video, and I think he even came to the conclusion someone might die or at least be hospitalized from it at some point.
Hell, I wanted one before because I love lemonade, but happened to see MatPat’s video first lol I don’t drink much caffeine at all, so that would’ve blasted me into another dimension
No one’s reading this bozo
They really didn't need to mislabel it and trick people. Energy drink junkies usually cycle through different drinks. This one would have been real popular with those addicts.
@@crispybatman480 ong, been chocking them redlines frfr
@@shotguntimmy Bangs and monster rehabs were the last brand I drank before I quit.
i drink caffeine i have to, cause i get caffeine headaches if i dont, but i dont drink it in large amounts anymore, but it wont ever make me hook on it
When I heard Charged Lemonade, I would have assumed it had as much caffeine as Starbucks refreshers or something, around a cup of coffee’s worth. Never would have expected pre-workout levels of caffeine. To me it just doesn’t make much sense to put that much caffeine in when like a quarter of the caffeine would still give most people a nice little buzz and would account for people getting a refill
Yeah they actually advertise it as "as much caffeine as a cup of our dark roast wakeup coffee!" not mentioning that their dark roast wakeup coffee (or whatever the actual title is) has an insane amount of extra caffeine added.
Idk why I like how you said “gives you a nice little buzz “😂
I didn’t know the refreshers had caffeine??? Nothing about the name “refresher” implies caffeine.
well I just discovered refresher's have caffeine XD
My pre-workout has 175mg. 1 Large Charged Lemonade has 390 mg, which is more than double.
I have the same heart condition as the first person who died. I am told to be very careful around heavily caffeinated drinks, but could very, very easily have assumed the lemonade was safe for me. This shit is deadly and they need to lose a lot of money and get rid of it entirely. I am glad that this should hopefully bring some awareness not to the condition itself, but falsely advertising drinks with a shit ton of extra chemicals or whatever. RIP, and this is absolutely insane.
how is it false advertising? its literally called CHARGED lemonade lol
@tonypringles2285 But _how_ is it "charged?" What is it being "charged" with? And how much?
It's the finer details to keep in mind when it comes to manners of ingredients, be it caffeine, sugar, nuts, etc. May not matter as to you, but it sure does to those with health restrictions, specific diets, or people who simply don't want to drink and excessive amounts of caffeine.
@@tonypringles2285charged can refer to any amount of caffeine, hell, you can call a spiked drink charged if you wanted to!
if your body is so weak it can't have caffeine then willingly buying something that says charged is your own fault lol@@PeriwinklePig
There are signs on the drinks that say they have as much caffeine as their coffees so it does clearly state that
I had no idea what this product was until I saw this video, then I remembered I saw a video about it about a year or so ago. This girl who would go into Panera to work on her laptop said she would drink it not knowing how caffinated it was, but it kept her energized and helped her stay productive. But she eventually started realizing it was making her heart race, and she said that every time she drank it, it made her feel like The Hulk. So she looked up how much caffeine was in it and also agreed that it could've potentially sent her to the hospital had she not become aware of it.
oh yeah, that blonde girl that was already TWEAKING THE SHIT OUT like damn ive seen people on COCAINE tweak less!! If thats not an indication that the caffeine levels are dangerous I dont know what is, Panera is seriously in denial!!!!
Matpat made a food theory about this potentially being deadly and now it’s become a reality.
Fellow food theory watcher, I had to check the upload date on this video cause I thought it must have came out earlier.
@@cooltiger2439same😂
yeah i remember that episode. it was only a matter of time until this started happening, unfortunately.
But that's JUST A THEORY, A GAME THEORY
its wild that its taken this long for people to start keeling over.
its crazy how Food Theory broke down the dangerous levels of caffeination in Charged Lemonade months ago and Panera just continued with their practices
I mean, a Millionare-Billionare (Idk) company isn't gonna cower in fear of Matpat
Lots of people have talked about it as soon as it releases but of course corpo doesnt care
Exactly. When that video was released I thought they would have soon did something, or at least to better disclosure the amount of caffeine or just lower it down.... honestly sad to see this happen because it was completely avoidable if action was taken...
in fact, it was ten months ago. almost an entire year
@@Flameonoodle They probably will when people start to watch his video on it and people call for heads to roll.
I almost got the charged lemonade, and i wanna say a massive thank you to the employee that asked if i was aware of the caffeine content. I have a few underlying issues, and cannot have caffeine. I dont even drink decaf coffee or tea, because i dont wanna take a chance of a mix up, and some brands still have caffeine. Long story short, im very vigilant about this kind of thing.I went to Panera for the first time in years, and I always get a lemonade. I dont recall seeing anything about it being an energy drink on the drive through menu, it couldve been there, but the menu has so many drinks and the writing is so small, I couldve missed something. I didnt think anything of the name "Charged", I thought it was an edgy new way to market citrus based drinks. On an average day, a can of pepsi is enough to put me in the danger zone. I was recovering from flu at the time so i was especially vulnerable. Im convinced that person saved my life. I know it sounds dramatic, but that amount of caffeine would no doubt, absolutely have put me in the hospital. I wish I had the receipt so i could get her name and send an email to her boss for her excellent customer service. Shes probably saved a lot of people from literal heartache.
no one asked tbh
@@newkg3591 i did, thank you for sharing your experience.
@@newkg3591that's crazy man, I must have forgotten that we elected you to be the voice of humanity
@@newkg3591lol
Not all heroes wear capes.
I really hope this lawsuit leads to clearer descriptions on "energy" or extremely caffeinated products! I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine and hate energy drinks, and I can't count the amount of times I thought I was just buying a can of cold brew coffee when really it was coffee + energy drink.
Same, I have POTS which already constricts my blood vessels so drinking something that I don’t know has caffeine in it is a huge deal.
That makes no sense at all. On average, cold brews have more caffeine than energy drinks. Your typical cold brew has around 200 mg per 16oz, while a Red Bull is at around 130mg per 16oz. 'I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine and hate energy drinks,' proceeds to drink a cold brew. Like, you can't make this up. People really have no clue what they put in their bodies and are just scared of the stigma energy drinks have.
Gotta agree with jbawg here. Not sure what you mean by cold brew + energy drink. Coffee has always had high caffeine content. It's just hard to put a number on the amount because it can vary so much based on the beans, the roast, and the brewing process. Cold brew (again depending on other variables) _can_ be significantly higher in caffeine than regular drip coffee.
I love coffee and don't really drink energy drinks much, but I find it funny how energy drinks have gotten such a bad wrap for being loaded in caffeine when your average coffee shop drinks can easily have just as much, and oftentimes more, caffeine.
I think one of the biggest differences between coffee and energy drinks is that people don't gulp down their coffee. Most people drink it slowly, so they aren't getting a huge hit of caffeine all at once.
All this to say, if you're sensitive to caffeine, you probably shouldn't be drinking much if any coffee, especially cold brew. But if you can't give it up, at least drink it slowly, like you would if it was a hot cup of coffee.
I love Monster Energy, but that's because it has half the caffeine of other energy drinks. I don't usually drink it due to the energy it gives me but rather because of the taste.
There needs to be a lawsuit against idiots like you who have to have there little hands held through everything in life. It’s time to grow up and be a responsible adult mommy can’t hold your hand forever. Maybe know what you’re going to put in your mouth before you do. I mean you wouldn’t just grab a bar of poison and eat it unless you’re an idiot right why is that maybe because you asked what it was and didn’t just chew on it. Again grow up.
I remember a year or two back I’d ordered Panera online and seen that these drinks were new. I saw the “charged” label on them, and assumed they were caffeinated to some degree- like a Mountain Dew or something. But just to make sure, I checked to see the caffeine content. For context- I have a very low caffeine tolerance, and anything over 100 mg will make me extremely sick so I have to be vigilant. It was at the VERY BOTTOM of the nutrition facts which I had to go searching for- and I was shocked that something with that high of caffeine content wouldn’t have it stated front and center like it does on most energy drinks.
I remember telling my parents that it seemed like a health hazard and I knew someone was gonna be hospitalized because of it sooner or later. I hate that things ended up the way they did.
I worked at Panera for a while and their advertising around the charged lemonade is shady as hell. They label it as having as much caffeine as a cup of their dark roast coffee when it actually has 4-5 times that amount. It’s insane.
How is that legal?
@@theab3957 I don’t think so. It’s false advertisement.
Uhh a cup of dark roast coffee is 8 oz, 8oz of coffee regardless of roast is approximately 70-140mg per 8 oz.
These drinks are like 30oz. Extrapolate = 30/8 = 3.75. 70-140 x 3.75 = 262 to 525mg of caffein.
Their drink has about the same amount at the lower end at that oz per oz. Also you can look up their menu, it doesn't say cup.
People are just negligent to not read when they order. The problem here is that people don't read and the drink is so easy to drink. The same reason why kids get beetus, sugary drinks are so easy to drink.
@@hirotakasugi4891 You’re doing meth, not math dude. I literally worked there. I think I would know the numbers on that shit better than you.
@@hirotakasugi4891 🤓
As someone who used to work for Panera, I can tell you this lemonade has to be incredibly addictive. We had people coming back multiple times in the store just to ask for more and would get angry if we didn’t serve them refills (since we could only give one per customer). One guy even threw his full drink at my co-worker because they didn’t serve him two. Weird as hell.
All this aside, the lemonade was the first thing ive ever tried at panera due to the sip club free trial, probably the best tasting lemonade ive ever had but the unfortunate thing is when you like something you tend to ingest it pretty quickly like any sugary drink and this thing made me feel like i was having a panic attack on the drive home.
@@superalientime3938 I used to drink it when I had to taste test them and honestly it was hella delicious. Only problem was after a few sips even from a water cup made me start shaking like crazy.
Caffeine is considered a drug, so I'm not surprised tbh
@@antssr_9106Then again caffeine isn’t really something that has a distinct taste.
Caffine is highly addictive, but no ome cares because you need a lot, energy drinks like ghost, c4, and prime have a lot
This is actually sad, seeing that this was covered by MatPat a while back. He went through everything that could happen if someone were to drink too much of it, and here is one of those possibilities being covered. :')
I worked at Panera for 6 years. We had to move the charged lemonades to the back because we saw people giving them to children. We are also required to tell people that it’s caffeinated and we did that as soon as it came out. It’s sad that this has happened and those cafes should be informing people about them being so caffeinated… Sad situation.
I was just wondering how many children have had this drink.
Yeah I was worried not only for those with underlying conditions but children too, and the probably very confused parents after their kids go batshit crazy after drinking a lemonade.
It has a huge label on it that tells you how much caffeine it has. The people who have died from it were drinking more than they should when they couldn’t handle that much caffeine. Every time I’ve gone to Panera the caffeine amount is on the containers and menu. In fact, the name is literally “CHARGED Lemonade”, are people seriously feeling this huge rush of energy and thinking “oh wow this is some fine made juice”.
So the store you worked at didn't have it listed as caffeinated? That's so weird because every one I've been to has it clearly listed in multiple places as highly caffeinated. Where was your store located?
My wife worked in leadership at Panera. She used to bring me these all the time, and even she didn't know how insane the caffeine content was. She still has the internal email to all Panera leaders regarding the "lemonade incident".
Shame your wife didn’t understand what she was selling until it was too late. People should always be educated
Panera isn't exactly a Michelin star restaurant. What did you expect? An ineluctable drink made with lemons harvested from the most fertile lemon grove in the world? Now you're acting like these Gen Z kids. Pay attention to what you put into your body.
@@RobbieStacks90 literally this. I worked at the number 1 Panera in the USA for years. They’re not right morally but they’re right legally. People need to pay attention to what they’re putting in their bodies.
@@RobbieStacks90Do I have to buy my lemonade at a Michelin star restaurant to prevent it from having lethal amounts of caffeine? Have some empathy, I'm sure you also have no idea about half the content of what you eat...
@@RobbieStacks90 Or, get this, the company could actually fucking discolse that each cup is like drinking 5 redbulls? Mayhe that? Maybe tell people what charged means? Cause if Panera show themselves as some healthy company and whatnot, people could think chafged means extra electrolytes in the drink or whatever is the best health thing to pedal.
I'm a former panera team lead, just quit last month. Quality control is also horrendous between store to store. My managers sold the pure non diluted charged lemonade for a month or so because they didn't know they were supposed to dilute it. Whenever I had to work cash, I always warned customers how much caffeine was in those drinks and they always changed their minds. Even us night shifters would dilute it even further for a good kick before a long closing shift, it was just so strong. A common criticism I've seen of the people who have died is that they should have paid closer attention to the labels, because there WERE labels, but they were SO tiny. They were basically fine print, and as a retail worker, I can bet all my money on the fact that the average american consumer does not read labels, let alone fine print, which is something corporate should have known and expected if they have any grasp of the demographic theyre marketing to.
I’m working at Panera for a year+ and then labels are not tiny at all people are just not reading and thinking it’s a regular drink. It’s an MLA format so there’s no reason why people shouldn’t read
actually, there has been research that shows that the average consumer doesn’t read things like warning labels/ other things in small print.
in my risk assessment course at uni we just talked about how people don’t read safety labels. methelylene chloride was used as an example of this- people, including trained workers wearing a ventilator, were stripping the paint off bathtubs and dying from exposure to the fumes. it seemed that the directions weren’t in enough detail to fully understand how to use the product safely, as even those who had worked with the product many times were dying from using it.
in response to the fatalities the manufacturer put a little picture of a crossed-out bathtub on the front corner of their product, with text stating some brief safety warnings that honestly blended into the background due to the thin lettering.
the EPA has stated that they’ll be making some kind of ban to methylene chloride soon, but this is just one other case where preventable deaths occur due to improper labelling…
@@Darke-nebula it could be that your store put out different labels than mine, given that some regions receive different product + signage than others. Our labels were very tiny.
Props to you for being a solid worker, especially warning customers about a potentially hazardous product. I hope you found a better place to work
Caffeine overdose is no joke- i accidentally did it with chocolate with caffeine in it. It scared the shit out of me when I was having an attack.
To not know how much caffeine you’re in taking and suddenly start having extreme symptoms is extremely scary.
I feel bad for the families and victims where by this
I remember the first time I had Panera’s “charged lemonade” I assumed it was caffeinated due to the name but not THAT caffeinated. I got so buzzed I felt sick afterwards, and I drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day usually… but this shit backhanded me into the multiverse. Not sure why Panera felt the need to caffeinate it to this extreme. I will not be having one ever again.
Apparently others have commented that some employees forget or don't know to dilute it.
@@HairyJuanfrom other videos, I'm told it wasn't labelled initially too, oddly enough.
What a horrible idea from the start. Who would caffeinate lemonade? Let alone “charge” it with the same amount of caffeine as energy drinks?
@@HairyJuanthere’s nothing to dilute really. When I worked at Panera the lemonade was a syrup that we mixed with water, they tell you how much water you’re suppose to add and that was it.
For addiction. Matpat made a video about it explaining it
You also have to consider that most people already routinely have coffee or an energy drink in the morning, so Imagine unknowingly adding 390mg of caffeine to what you've already consumed just because you wanted a fruity lemonade with your lunch.
There's also people like me, who can't have it not because it's acutely dangerous but because of mental health. If you're on lithium for bipolar, caffeine can counteract it. This would be like being off medication for at least an entire day, maybe two given the amount at its half life 12 hours later it would still be enough to make up an energy drink
And for reference, the max amount of caffeine a grown adult can safely have PER DAY is 400 mg.
He should go with water not sugar.
@@mimblewait is that true ? 400 mg? I have a cup or two of deathwish coffee every morning which advertises something to the effect of 700+ mgs to a 12 oz cup
@@denvercrane455 Yep, 400mg is the max to consume safely. Of course, people have different tolerances, but that's the average.
What honestly shocks me is that matpat made a video about this a while back and no one seemed to pay attention. My heart goes out to the families that lost their loved ones
YES I made a comment on about that. It’s very dangerous and he went into deep about it
@DeadfishKing Uhhh He's more associated with FNAF theories. Where did you get that idea?
I actually refused to touch it after that video. I typically start my day with at least one cup of coffee, I don't need to add my entire day's worth of caffeine in ONE drink after. I don't have any conditions, but after a number of dizzy spells a while back my doctor suggested cutting back on caffeine and I haven't drank more than one, sometimes two, cups per day since.
What really gets me is that people swear it's these people's fault for being too stupid to realize a "charged lemonade" should be caffeinated. And I'm like. No! That drink holds _an entire day's worth of caffeine._ Well, now it's _almost_ a whole day.
@DeadfishKing Do you have evidence to backup your claim? I, and other people only know MatPat who is heavily associated with the FNAF franchise because of his theories and also the guy who attempted to eat a Christmas tree on Food Theory.
@DeadfishKingSame. He used to be known as that guy who made weird Mario theories (before FNAF.) Still fun. Then FNAF came out
I remember Mat pat covered this over on food theory years ago. He basically implied that it was only a matter of time before someone died.
Edit: I have lost track of time, so it was only about a year ago not “years”
That wasn’t even *a* yeah ago but yeah he did
he made it this year my friend
that was not years ago
leave em alone. they lost track of time.
I'll never understand why these fucking companies can't just be like
"We have become aware that due to an oversight in the marketing of our new "Charged Lemonade" product, there has resulted a tragic loss of life. Our hearts and sympathy are with the families of those who were victim to this error, and we will seek to compensate them as best we can within the boundary of reason. In order to prevent this from happening again in the future, we will be notifying all Panera Bread locations to label "Charged Lemonade" appropriately as a highly caffeinated beverage."
It would be so much less effort than fighting a drawn out legal battle and would do nothing but make the company look good in the eyes of the reasonable. People fuck up sometimes, admit, fix it if i can be fixed, apologize and try not to do it again in the future. It's really not that hard.
Because the justice system is fucked. Any lawyer would tell you to shut the hell up until we say so lol Their lawyers are no different
Because money. If they think they can get away with it, they will try to get away with it.
i ain’t reading allat 🔥🔥
@@SLKFOREVER03 Then why even respond?
they can’t say that most likely because of the legal battle. To be honest it’s really not their fault. Anyone you see words like “charged” or “spiked” in the name you should at least look at the label to be sure. Also lots of people are implying the drink itself is dangerous when it’s completely fine.
This is insane. I actually used to study at Panera bread pretty often a couple of months ago. While there I would drink the lemonade because with a subscription you could get unlimited drinks. I would drink around 5 of these "charged lemonades" a day while studying. I remember I started getting really fast heart palpitations and my hands would shake uncontrollably while I was trying to study. All the while I had no idea about the caffeine content. One day it hit me that charged may imply that it had caffeine content. When I checked it turned out that each lemonade contains around 250 or so milligrams of caffeine. So I was consuming around 1000-1250 mg of caffeine each day. I really thought that I might have just been an idiot and never thought much of it until just now.
Edit: I also have a minor heart condition so yeah...
How in the world did you not get hospitalized? Don't you think you would've caught on after the first time when realizing your hands are apparently shaking uncontrollably? That doesn't make sense to me.
@@SonicMaster519 I honestly thought it was just anxiety. You also underestimate my lack of general intelligence lmao
@@ThatsTooUnreal I guess that makes sense. Still shocking you weren't hospitalized for all that caffeine. These losers are clearly not displaying the dangerous amount of caffeine in the lemonade properly at all.
@@SonicMaster519The lethal limit of caffeine is 5,000-10,000mg assuming you don’t have any underlying conditions. 1,250mg in one sitting is still very dangerous though.
@@rogeliocano9536 I wasn't aware of that, thanks for the information.
I am 22 and thinking that a 21 year old could die from just grabbing a drink with her friends is just so scary.
Anyone can die from drinking too much caffeine. There’s been incidences of kids drinking several energy drinks and then dying. It’s just really shocking it only took one in this case, but any kind of heart condition makes the risk 10 times more or worse
Yo I'm 22 too :D
You’re fine, she had an underlying medical condition so her age was mostly irrelevant, though probably should avoid the lemonade still
4 8 Oz redbulls is fine you just need to know what a milligram is
You're fine if you don't have a heart condition though.
I used to work at a Panera and remember when that stuff came out, we experimented with the syrup in like other drinks and stuff but yeah it's like super potent and Panera does a horrible job showing people how strong it is, even some of the cashiers would personally warn customers. I remember a lot of elderly people ordering it without knowing
As a Panera employee when the charged lemonades first came out we did warn customers about the caffeine contents of the drink, however the executives told us to stop doing that, really sad situation I do not stand by the company whatsoever but where I live it’s the only job I have the mental capacity to work.
@@OfficerAtomZeeLooks like shit to me
I've seen so many Panera employees telling stories about how they knew this was going to be an issue, but you're the first one I've seen say that the execs said to stop warning people. That seems... really, really damning. I can only imagine that there will be testimonies like that in the trials, because it seems like everyone who worked there knew they were potentially dangerous.
loser@@OfficerAtomZee
@@OfficerAtomZee blud though he copped a W with this reply 💀
It’s a shame because Panera bread restaurants are usually pretty relaxing and the food is pretty decent. Killing customers kind of goes against their chill vibe.
I saw the charged lemonade when I was at Panera a few weeks ago. I only kept reading the label because I was curious what “charged” meant. You had to read all the way down in order to learn it contained caffeine and how much. I was shocked at the amount. They probably shouldn’t offer free refill on it when one contains the daily recommended intake of caffeine.
Good point! And yeah they should have the caffeine and amount right at the beginning!!!!
@@e.k.1836sadly most energy drinks have the caffeine towards the bottom
My dumbass thought “charged lemonade” meant electrified lemonade
@@Militant_Vegan you're not dumb, it's normal for people to assume it just have electifying taste like fizzy lemonade
Technically not supposed to offer free refills on them but we are also told to help guests with they’re needs as simple as a refill for free so 🫠
The charged lemonade has 390mg of caffeine while the FDA says that the average, non-health adverse adult should only have 400mg per day before they begin to have side effects from caffeine intake. Its insane to me that they didnt label them and crazier is that these lawsuits dont include the judge just saying "wtf, pay up and fix that shit"
Simply because they didn’t have to. The wanted to deceive the public. As long as it was under the 400 mg mark they saved their butt with a lawsuit
I barely fall asleep with less than 90mg of it, what they did is pure evil
It's massive misinformation to say they didn't label it. It was labeled per size under every single flavor in larger bolder letters than the flavor description
It had to be deliberately ignored. And that 390mg is in 30oz, nearly a liter of the lemonade. They aren't being made to fix anything because it was already well labeled and the people had to choose to ignore the labels to drink it
That’s more than a bang energy drink that’s kind of crazy
@@BryanMiranda96even with labels its unethical to sell something so borderline dangerous to consumers.
Panera was kind of known for being a "healthier" style of food in general. They should know consumers are often unreliable about this kind of thing and it would be a huge liablity to try and be convinced that they'd know how much is TOO much. A lot of people really just try stuff without really reading or learning about it unfortunately.
Alongside this please know that their major audience of consumers are young ppl who strive for that energy boost every morning. If they are part of their drink club i wouldnt be surprised if someone got two for a deal thinking it was a good idea..
The biggest issue is that someone who isn’t used to high caffeine intake or drinking energy drinks, can die from it and there’s no warning label in any way. As someone who used to drink charged lemonades every day for about a year and a half, it wasn’t that bad to me. The only reason why I stopped is because I wanted to reduce my caffeine intake.
As someone who used to work for Panera Bread I can confirm that the amount of sugar for the lemonade is ludicrously high and that they didn’t do much to try to lower it
As a normal guy, i can confirm that most restaurants have lemonade with a ton of sugar in it.
Wouldn’t recomment anyone with sugar issues drinking lemonade.
Anyone having such issues needs to make sure about what they are putting in their bodies. Restaurants here aren’t required to label such things and only the higher end ones got stuff listed, but even those not all the time. Especially with drinks.
Some common sense would have helped on both sides to be honest. The restaurant shouldn’t have put it where they did on the menu and would have helped if they listed that it containes caffeine, but if you got issues with sugar and coffe and you see a drinked with “charged” in it, i would think you would at least question it, cuz that screams energy drink vibes to me.
@@LorandHungary I was there and the only thing we would put into it to try to alleviate the sugar is a like a bit of water but we would put in like 5 lemonade mixes for like a bit of water
Good job. The problem is the caffeine. Not sugar genius...
Could've just put some sucralose instead
Oh fuck me here I thought it was healthy.......thanks captain obvious. 🙄🙄👌👈🤦♂🤦♂
Dude, those caffeine mg numbers are fucking ludicrous. I am a heavy, heavy caffeinated beverage enjoyer. Over 250 mg of caffeine in a single drink would have me pretty wired. 400 plus is extreme discomfort, cold sweats, insane jitters, borderline vomit inducing.
Exactly, normally stop if I start to feel hyped up but anymore than that it sucks to feel extremely nervous it ruins it.
Black tea made me vomit. This drink terrifies my heart and stomach. it’s insanity if anyone’s willing to try it after this if it’s still on the menu
@@erikaisabella2651weak
Its a great choice if you want a heavy dose of caffeine in avg drink dose. Tastes pretty good too. Its just about making an informed decision.
it's 390mg if you fill the 30oz cup to the top with NO ice. with a normal amount of ice, it's around 275ish
I studied negligence over this past semester in law school and I would love to see this case win because to me, all the elements of negligence (duty, breach of duty, causation - actual cause and proximate cause, and damages) are all pretty clearly met here in my mind. I feel so bad for these two victims. May they receive the justice they deserve.
How? It's clearly labeled and advertised as a energy filled lemonade. Theres a huge banner stating so over every station and has been that way since day one.
@@NoNe-u3v6r But what the hell is "energy filled" supposed to mean? That could mean anything from containing a lot of sugar, citric acid, or just an appropriate amount of caffeine. And if it is so clearly advertised as such, WHY ARE PEOPLE FUCKING DYING?
@user-iu5hc6ou8h The question that the courts will have to answer is whether there was sufficient warning. Some people are saying that there were signs everywhere and it was obvious the drink was caffeinated, others are saying that there were no signs and panera was deliberately hiding the caffeine content. I have seen no evidence either way, because people on the Internet love to make baseless claims to try and seem smart. The courts will decide whether there was sufficient warning, and if there wasn't they'll fine them for 1% of their monthly profits
@@NoNe-u3v6ras someone who went to a panera a lot a while back, they are NOT labelled as having caffeine. They just say “Charged lemonade”. I drank their charged tea not knowing there was caffeine in it. Honestly no wonder I had palpitations after drinking it.
@@mememaster695 Courts will rule in favor of Panera in both. They have the information posted correctly as they have to by law with the nutritional values, etc. This falls under menu labeling laws and if they have them posted, they are not liable. Especially when both individuals suffered from genetic medical conditions, where they should not be consuming anything that would aggravate the conditions. As well as the "charged" part of the name, it very clearly indicates its not a standard drink.
While it sucks it happened, its not the companies fault. Its like blaming pre-workouts for having absurd levels of caffeine because they arent labeled as "energy drinks" or some sort of other ridiculous remark.
This is really scary because I'm someone who has some sort of caffeine intolerance that causes panic attacks. I can handle a mug of tea every few days but even a single mug of coffee ruins my day (stomach aches, panic attacks, and insomnia). If I accidently drank that lemonade, I genuinely don't know what would happen. My caffeine issues isn't tested by doctors so I don't know if its a serious issue or not.
Yeah me too. I think it would kill me. 1 cup of coffee makes me shake and have skipped heart beats and my blood sugar crashes below 50. It's horrible.
When I got this at Panera, the employee warned me it had caffeine. There were signs on the window describing the content per size, and the signs above the literal lemonade made it very clear it was caffeinated. I noticed this at 2 different locations in louisville, and man was that shit caffeinated. If any of those steps were bypassed, yikes. Because it was tasty, and way easier to down than coffee or a carbonated energy drink
It wasn't. I live in the area where the first death happened. It's very obvious and the college girls friends admitted her parents lied about her never drinking anything with caffine and that she frequently was drinking stuff she knew she shouldn't bc tired and college. It's sad but it's not paneras fault ppl are ignorant.
Used to work at panera when it first started being sold. We were instructed we could not warn people that it had high caffeine because it affected sales. Not sure if they took this back later but that was the reason I quit, I'd imagine this has killed many others and just hasn't been linked to the deaths
Also it took me and other store employees about 3 weeks to realize the insane amount of caffeine that it actually had
@@rocketman3459idk if you’re lying just to lie, but i manage a Panera. Would like to know what panera you were working at bc that’s not true, at least in my region.
@@NoNe-u3v6r sure you do, Joined 13 Dec 2023
My mom was sent to the hospital after drinking this. The caffeine content in the app is hidden under two separate drop downs. Yes, it says charged, but nobody in their right mind would assume that a single drink would contain your daily limits worth of caffeine.
I had two cups of it one time, not knowing how much caffeine was in it, and I had my first panic attack that night. I never touched the evil lemonade again.
@@Militant_Vegan it's a bot; just report & move on.
Rookie numbers.
have a heart condition and I drank like 2 every day for a month, basically I became a live test subject I don't recommend it at all and now since then I've off caffeine for nearly 2 years, it honestly crazy like people should really try to stop drinking coffee you feel so much better once you never have cravings for it.
@@vortex_talon Unfortunately, you are correct. I'm kind of caffeine addict which I didn't think was possible until I went a day without having some and felt miserable. It's more addictive than you'd think.
This makes me want to try charged lemonade and get fucked up.
@@SLIM-SH8YPlease don't, you're gonna get yourself killed
Matpat called it
Fun fact: I now cannot have any energy drinks bc of the charged lemonade. I had one, and the cartilage in my chest inflamed near my heart to the point where I had stroke-like symptoms. I felt like my right arm was giving out and my face went numb.
Damn
holy crap, I'm so sorry that happened to you. i can't believe a drink is so damaging
Is it possible for you to bring your story forward? That's insane, and should be made public to the masses.
Bro sue Panera
glad you’re alive and okay!!!!
My girlfriend works at panera, and she told me before the two deaths that it had way too much caffeine and that someone is going to have a heart attack. The craziest thing is that even after the first death, all they did was add a little sign below the register, and on the machine, I swear she had to point it out for me to see it that's how small it was. I go there multiple times a week to pick her up, and one time I see two old ladies inside drinking the large size of the mango yuzu citrus or whatever at 9 in the night💀. She tells me they're supposed to tell the customers, but some of her coworkers are too lazy to tell them. They also used to leave it out with the fountain drinks so that anyone can drink some whenever they feel. Really stupid and tragic situation. Rest in peace to the victims and I wish the best for the family.
"Your" girlfriend? What century are we in? Women are not objects.
Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)
Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)!!
@@RobbieStacks90Bro all he said was she worked at the place …
@@musiccentral7851 I don't think you understand how possessive pronouns work.
Just to put this into perspective:
The charged lemonade drink at Panera Bread has 390 milligrams of caffeine
One 12oz redbull contains 111 milligrams of caffeine so in 1 charged lemonade your getting the same amount of caffeine from almost 3 and a half 12oz redbull cans.
The amount the FDA recommends you consume per day is 400 milligrams of caffeine as a healthy adult.
you're comparing a 12oz Redbull can to a 30oz lemonade tho, of course the number is gonna be bigger (BUT to be fair thered still be more caffeine if the lemonade was 1/3 the size)
Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)
The FDA has no control over how much caffeine people consume and cannot in any way hold people to 400 mg caffeine per day. The FDA, among other bodies, has RECOMMENDED 400 mg a day as safe. Obviously, this lemonade is not, has not been, and cannot be killing people without extreme underlying health conditions necessitating their caution in the first place.
@@plaguedcarrionmassacre8983 my bad i forgot to add the bit where i compared the two. it should be there now though
@@theprismotic3765 Do you Gen Z kids not know how to make lemonade? It's simple. You go to the supermarket, find lemons in the grocery aisle, purchase them, throw them in a fruit juicer, and enjoy a nice cup of pure lemon juice. If you can't handle the acidity, you can add sugar to the drink. It's kind of like what you might do at a nightclub.
Simply having an unlimited drinks thing with effectively an energy drink (even worse than coffee where you kinda have to take your time and let it cool down, plus less caffeine content per drink) sounds like its begging to go wrong. Consider an open bar, but you don't throw up or black out, your heart just explodes.
I used to live off the charges lemonade during my first year of college and it is indeed a lot of caffeine. I once drank 3 of them cause of the stress as a freshman and it was not a fun time, thankfully I learned my lesson and don’t drink more than 1 if I can even stomach it in the first place. It’s hard to believe Panera can legally put that much caffeine into 1 drink, my condolences to the families who have suffered.
Yea this is why I think this story has some BS behind it. If someone doesn't drink caffeine at all, they're going to know something is up after drinking 300+mg
The idea that they're just casually selling a glorified Red Bull fountain drink with free refills is... kind of eerie. Like, one visit won't just give you wings; you'll be spouting wings out of every orifice in your body like a chaos spawn.
biblically accurate redbull
Sick 😮
Their food kills contributes to more deaths than this, have you seen the macros in their Mac n Cheese??
In the UK you can't even sell energy drinks to anyone under 16. Anything over 150mg of caffeine per liter has to come with a clear warning label like it's a pack of smokes.
And we're just dispensing them from pitchers at Panera Bread willy nilly and calling it "lemonade".
It'll give you wings and a halo and send you to god ☠️
MatPat straight up predicted this when he covered the Charged Lemonades on Food Theory
Yeah. Unfortunately he was spot on with that.
Is it really a prediction when it's more of a logical conclusion? 😅
@@carlosmatthews1910reported for misinformation
Like my lawyer always says: one death is a coincidence, two are a firing of a scapegoat employee
As someone who WORKED at Panera, when the charged lemonades came out I wasn't even aware they had caffeine. I had one for the first time, only to realize I was bouncing off the walls. They do a terrible job at informing that they have caffeine.
My ex was hooked on them, and gave one to his mom one evening. She was PISSED! She couldn’t sleep and her heart was racing.
@@WowJustWow37bro, that sounds ASS, poor lady
Wow. If a customer specifically asks about the ingredients, and it's not posted, an employee HAS to know the answer or be able to get it quickly. Seems like negligence on their part.
As an employee of Panera, I can say I survived drinking 7 large charged lemonades over a long night. This is before I heard anyone died but wow did I feel like my heart was going to explode
Bro how are you alive are you like 6’8
This is a lie. The large is more than 30 ounces. You would have spent your whole shift only peeing.
😂
@@darnelwashinton1295nah i can drink a lot and not have to pee so ur trippin
This was between 2pm and 7am, like I said, a long night
I worked at Panara and we did have two signs that said the amount of caffeine in the drinks. One was a huge poster next to the menu and the second was a tiny sign right above the drink itself. However the tiny one was barely legible/easy to miss. The large one however we would have to switch for breakfast so wasn’t always there if the workers forgot to change the sign.
Same at the Paneras near me. It seems like it's an issue based on managers at certain stores. It's shown clearly it has caffeine on the menu from mine.
Same, that’s the confusion I’ve had, I get these occasionally and drink one over the course of a few days, but my local paneras had it fully marketed as high caffeine content and had clear information on the actual amount of caffeine.
I guess what I mean is that I was shocked to hear this was happening because my local paneras had appropriate signage :(
I doubt those stores are any different. I think most of the people complaining about it have probably never been to a Panera shop and don't realize all the different lemonades have signs telling you what they are. @@5050TM
I had four of these one time when studying for finals and It made me feel like my soul was vibrating
Fun story, a couple months back, I drank two servings of this without knowing they were caffeinated. It was right in the spot where the old lemonade machine was and I proceeded to gain the greatest headache and tremors I have ever felt. It subsided but I didn't think I was this close to death.
Glad you didn’t :(
Read next time lmao
@@jonathanoloba7791 bro does not have any sympathy
@@jonathanoloba7791 read what? "charged" lemonade could mean literally anything, probably not an extremely caffeinated beverage unless you had some knowledge on the drink in the first place. And it being right where the regular lemonade was is really shit placement
@-a-fox- first time I saw "charged" I Googled to see what it was charged with. I thought sugar but still I will look up stupid marketing terms instead of just rolling with it.
the fact that a drink with 390mg caffeine isnt being marketed as an energy drink (a can of monster energy has 160mg caffeine) is crazy. 400mg in a day is considered bad for you and over a thousand can be fatal to some people, so this is crazy
to be fair, it should be illegal to not market it as an energy drink.
holy shit. I heard it was worse than energy drinks but I didn't know it was that bad
I'm one of the freaks that actually checks nutrution info and from my experience most energy drinks are 150-200mg. Higher caffiene drinks like Bang have 300mg, and even this is high enough that some people who drink energy drinks cannot tolerate it. Any more than that is nutty, especially for something not advertised as an energy drink. Even if you understand that the drink is caffeinated, there's no way most people would guess the sheer amount in the product
It's 390mg in a 30 Oz drink without ice. That's not really worse than coffee or energy drinks. Also the lethal dose of caffeine is way higher at >150mg/kg bodyweight. If a gram kills you you probably had a heart condition.
@@bcfuerst yes, that's why i said it can be fatal to some. most people wont die from a gram of caffeine, but thats about when people with heart conditions will start dying
there has been research that shows that the average consumer doesn’t read things like warning labels/ other things in small print.
in my risk assessment course at uni we just talked about how people don’t read safety labels. methelylene chloride was used as an example of this- people, including trained workers wearing a ventilator, were stripping the paint off bathtubs and dying from exposure to the fumes. it seemed that the directions weren’t in enough detail to fully understand how to use the product safely, as even those who had worked with the product many times were dying from using it.
in response to the fatalities the manufacturer put a little picture of a crossed-out bathtub on the front corner of their product, with text stating some brief safety warnings that honestly blended into the background due to the thin lettering.
the EPA has stated that they’ll be making some kind of ban to methylene chloride soon, but this is just one other case where preventable deaths occur due to improper labelling… and even if there are labels they aren’t always specific, visible, and/or understandable enough.
A usual can of soda has around 35-45mg caffeine per can. Kickstarters usually have about twice this at around 80mg. Celsius and Prime have 200 per can/bottle, which is for reference, about 5 cans of soda worth of caffiene. The charged lemonade has about as much caffeine as a whole 10 cans of an average soda.
I worked at Panera for over a year and I remember always thinking that something like this was gonna happen with those lemonades. I'd even try to warn customers whenever they got it that they had so much caffeine.
The sad thing is that they probably did it on purpose as a lot of companies are starting to add caffeine to their products due to its slight addictive property just to get an edge up on competition
Caffeine doesnt make you addicted to a single item or restaurant. If youre addicted to caffeine, youre gonna be addicted caffeine no matter where or what it is. You dont fiend for a particular thing with caffeine in it, you fiend for the caffeine. And idk why companies decide to put caffeine into any drinks at all, if you need caffeine that bad they make caffeine pills. Its a drug at the end of the day, it shouldnt be put into everyday things we consume. But it also shows how much we as people dont care what we consume. You hear "Charged Lemonade" and think its a regular drink? Dont ask about it? Dont look it up? Yes it should be more open as to what it is and whats in it, but people also shouldnt be so ignorant that theyll consume whatever
@@arejayftp5956 your brain doesn't know it's addicted to the caffeine, only that you feel good and energized when you drink the lemonade. Yes, you could probably satiate the need elsewhere, but not if you don't even know that it's the caffeine that you like lol. That's why the original comment points out that it's intentionally put alongside non caffeinated drinks.
@@arejayftp5956 it won’t make it super addicting but there is a component to it that makes it at least a bit more desirable over time due to the caffeine in it
thereality is, when people sneak drugs into other drugs, they do it so you go back to the same dealer for the fix.@@arejayftp5956
@@nottaibo To not know youre consuming caffeine is ignorant in this day and age. Most of everything that has caffeine tells you. And its not intentionally put next to the non caffeinated drinks, first of all thats not a thing, drink machines have normal soda/diet and a couple other non caffeinated drinks so idk how thats even an argument people are trying to make when mcdonalds and every other restaurants drink machines have caffeinated and non caffeinated drinks right next to each other. Second of all, its next to other lemonades which makes sense why it would be there. The fact someone can look at something called CHARGED lemonade and think its just normal lemonade without asking about it or looking it up is complete ignorance. What you just said would be the same as smoking crack and not knowing youre addicted to the crack. It doesnt make sense
I’m glad I didn’t die the summer they introduced unlimited sip club. I drank a lot of these lemonades, had severe anxiety, and my heart would randomly start racing. I switched to sparkling water and started feeling better, but at first I didn’t think it could be lemonade of all things.
That's an insane story. It's a good thing your intuition kicked in and you made that switch.
It was heartbreaking when I heard about this, the girl went to my school and I briefly spoke to her once but she was really nice.
When this was released I had just gotten to college freshman year. We have a Panera on campus, and as a promotion Panera gave a free month of something called an "unlimited sip club" for signing up for their app. This meant that you could get a free drink from panera every hour. One of the drinks as part of this program was the charged lemondade. I knew it had caffeine, but I never knew how much. Me as well as dozens of other students would be constantly getting charged lemonades, the biggest sizes too. I thought it was the same, maybe a little more than a cup of coffee. I've stopped drinking them since I found out how bad they were, the sugar mostly, but I still know people who have it daily. They really need to be clearer with the marketing, since we had no idea how much caffeine and sugar it had.
I work at Panera bread and we aren’t supposed to keep the charged lemonade by the regular uncaffeinated drinks after the first person that passed, we’re supposed to keep them behind the registers and they have warning signs on the container that the drinks are in, so these people of the family of the person who died recently could win the lawsuit against them because they weren’t following the rules they were supposed to be following.
My question is, why is Panera's response to add a warning label saying "Hey this might LITERALLY K*LL you" instead of just reducing the caffeine in it??
@@jesz97 exactly.
@@jesz97 because they don’t want to, it’s the whole selling point of the drink
@@jesz97 Because anything can literally kill you. Drinking too much water can kill you, they're not going to label every single water bottle with "don't drink 10L all at once" or whatever. They're not going to label christmas cards or envelopes with "a papercut can kill you if it gets infected, handle with care".
@@jesz97college kids live off this stuff, its a major selling point
Also the beverage machines used, sometimes will put out more of the packaged syrup mix through the dispenser so you don't know how much of the concentrate was added to the mix. That 390mg for the large, could've easily been 500-600 depending on the rare occasion.
It's so intense when the postmix gives you an extra syrupy Coke, absolute flavour experience
Lmao yeah i think they also had rotten food inside the drinks and it tasted/smelled like leaving well, a lemonade outside in the heat for multiple days
I don't think the charged lemonade is dispensed in the fountain drink dispensers, so this might be a non issue depending on how the drink is prepared.
having POT’s and knowing that would’ve killed me is crazy. i live in Australia and we don’t have panera here anyway but still insane to think about
I'm not sure if they still do this, but even Monster used to have a warning on the can that stated "limit 3 per day" and this is the energy drink brand notorious for being consumed by dudes named Kyle that punch holes in their walls and hate their stepdads. Why Panera wouldn't label their caffeine content like literally any other drink, even cola, is beyond me.
In Australia all energy drinks still carry a daily limit warning, can't speak for North American labelling
Monster only has 100mg, daily limit in the us is about 300mg, modern energy drinks literally contain that much in one can WITHOUT A WARNING
My local college had a Kyle story where he was litterally in psych class and the professor was telling him to not chug those and proceeded to then collapse in the middle of class.
Thankfully not the one I was in it was a few years prior. That story is why I avoid energy drinks
The do label the caffeine
Seems to be that the small charged lemonades have between 150-237mg per drink. Seeing that he had three, it can be guessed that he had 600-700mg. This isn’t enough to kill the average person, it will just make them sick, but seeing that he had underlying health issues, it’s not surprising. They’ve got to be labeled like any other energy drink, coffee, or pre workout.
237 mg is for a 30 ounce drink it says on their website. Also with the sip club there's no free refills, you get a free drink every two hours, so for this guy to get three he either stole the refills or he visited three separate times to get the largest drink size of an energy drink... They're clearly labeled as an energy drink at the store near me, there's a big high caffeine warning about them at the cash register and also at the drive thru, although it could've been different at the store this guy went to.
@@loiloiloi6they did the caffeine sign after they died
The biggest problem is that they're still calling it lemonade. When you hear lemonade you don't think caffeinated they need to call it something else and significantly reduce the amount of caffeine or better yet just take it off the damn menu
Regardless it’s still a lemonade. The biggest problem is people not being educated in food safety and not being area of how much of certain things people need. Proper education is the problem not the people misleading.
@@mrcreepypasta256A person shouldn't be able to slip up one day and then die because their lemonade had nearly enough caffeine to make a full grown adult suffer side effects.
I was at Panera Bread 3 days ago and it does state clearly on the label that the charged lemonade contains 300-400 mg of caffeine per serving
@@craigmeyer6957 sue them. They’re supposed to have it in very small print under the name
@@creeperizak8971 you’re right they shouldn’t. But it’s unfortunate death is that easy and people forget.
the pre-workout i use is ryse stim-daddy. its a pre meant to have ADDED stimulant.
the serving is only 10mg caffeine more than the large lemonade..
That is actually terrifying! I had (have?) a heart condition and can't drink caffeine. I wound up in the ER from drinking 2 cans of tea that wasn't properly labeled as being caffeinated. Heart rate was 180bpm lying down. I asked the company the next day and they said "it has some but it's not that much so we don't have to say it's caffeinated" omg. I wanted to sue.
Pretty much all black tea has trace amounts of caffeine. Though generally that would be marked on the nutrition info on a can.
I worked for panera bread a few years back. We were required to slice off the crust/end pieces of certain breads and simply throw it away, so we'd end up with a large bin of bread crusts. We had homeless people occasionally stop by to ask if we had anything they could eat, and we were required to tell them no and shoo them away from the establishment. Really disgusting waste of food that we could be serving to local homeless people. It blew my mind how many bins of end-pieces of bread we had. I got fired eventually for reasons I won't disclose but minimum wage $8.40 for 9 hours a day doing multiple roles. Kinda insanity. Fuck this company. Always knew they were shifty.
It's illegal to give food to homeless/in need people for free, at least where I live, unless you go through official charities and organizations.
@Mythinull and even if it were not illegal, it opens the company up to liabilities since the food was 'waste'. Any lawyer would be able to twist that into a 'they knew it was waste product and still served it'.
@@ArcticDrakejust that’s it’s wrong, crazy, unethical and anti human.
Every restaurant does it tho, and they have for quite a while.
McDonald’s toss all their extra food in a compactor that smushes all the food together then presses into a tight bale.
This could actually be a good thing, food waste in landfills produces copious amounts of methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas and a rapidly increasing problem with a fairly easy fix, don’t trash food, spoiled or otherwise. Of course all McDonald’s throw it straight into the dumpster out back, which of course go straight into landfills. Compressing it like this actually makes for more methane production, it’s the ANAEROBIC breakdown that makes methane, if allowed it were broken down in open air it wouldn’t make much methane at all, but pressed tight and buried it’s guaranteed to make a ton.
So it’s a nice double whammy!
Allowing some people to starve today, and putting off lots of methane for us ALL to enjoy tomorrow… and next week, and next year… cuz it doesn’t break down and there’s no natural “methane cycle” (there is a carbon cycle, so it can naturally be pulled from our air and used).
But at least no starving people will get a tummy ache from a hamburger that’s a few hours old… that’s reserved for paying customers
@@ArcticDrakedude you’re so annoying. We get it. You get headaches if you have to read more than two sentences. Go take a nap “lil bro”
I agree with it being waste. Harris Teeter (grocery store) throws out a cart of produce a day. It’s expired. It’s illegal.
i knew immediately what the deaths were from. To put into perspective how horribly caffeinated these are, I consumed one large per day last year for about a week due to a show I was working on (I was working the equivalent of a 15 hour work day for 7 days straight) It was the only thing that kept me going on TOP of my prescription stimulants. I experienced some strange episodes of unexplained chest pain that week.
Now imagine how drinking 3 in one day felt for that dude 😢 My doctor frequently warns me to avoid caffeine use since I am prescribed stimulants. Never been a fan of mixing drugs.
Are you okay now ?
Apart from the caffeine, you really shouldn't be consuming that much sugar either. Take care of yourselves people
To be fair, you should know that something literally labeled CHARGED is probably something extreme
Earlier this year, I tried the strawberry charged lemonade and I was hooked & shooked - not only was it pretty good it literally had me heart racing after 2-3 sips. I was genuinely worried for a sec because I don’t have heart problems, zero allergies, & I’m a young adult. I drink soda and I’ve NEVER experienced that feeling in my chest before.
I drank it a few more times (over the course of about a month) before I stopped. My heart would always race every time I drank a charged lemonade. Surprisingly, I didn’t assume it was the drink at first bc: Who the fuck puts caffeine in lemonade!? I thought the word “charged” was an exaggerated hype term used to boost the sales of that drink. I had zero clue that it meant their lemonades contained caffeine (let alone so much).
As someone that knew those drinks were caffeinated based on the name and just assumption, I would've never thought they were that HIGHLY caffeinated. I would have NEVER guessed the level of caffeine was higher than most energy drinks and at the level of pre workout.. completely Panera's fault for not disclosing the level of it from the beginning.
Given how dangerous energy drinks already can be, idk who the fuck at Panera went "add more caffeine bro" and thought it wouldn't be reckless and dangerous. Why couldn't they just limit the caffeine to how much an energy drink has?
it is STILL significantly higher than the level of caffeine "in" pre-workout. The average dose of caffeine in pre is still around 200mg.
@@riott ur right and not considering the fact that no one’s getting refills of energy drinks or preworkout.. it’s kind of a one and done, getting these charged drinks refilled would be so bad for anyone’s heart.
@@sholem_bond the issue is energy drinks don’t have unlimited refills.. those lemonades are worse because without a thought you could finish a cup during your meal then refill it on your way out.. leading to potentially consuming almost 700mg of caffeine without even knowing..
@@berrymerry1141 yeah, exactly. and considering people probably aren't expecting to do much physical activity after going there means all that caffeine isn't even being used as intended.
I just will never understand why some random lemonade at a restaurant has more caffine than most energy drinks and pre workouts... let alone the other portions.
I work as a manager at a panera and can say for my store at least we’ve been warning people about how caffeinated it is since day 1 of launch
i remember when the charged lemonade was released while i worked at panera. whenever there were new menu options, everyone had to stay late or come in after the store closed so the employees could try all of the new items. One of the new items that year was the charged lemonade.
i have pretty bad heart issues, and because of this i can’t drink or consume any caffeine. but no one told me that the new lemonade was fucking pumped full of it. everyone had a glass of it, and within 30mins my heart was racing.
i remember thinking “oh i must be just having some bad anxiety or something”
but oh boy i was wrong.
an hour later as i was driving home i felt like i was gonna have a heart attack. i had to pull over on to the side of the road and eat something to balance out my system. thankfully, i ended up being okay, but i had severe heart palpitations for days after that.
i wondered why it had happened, and couldn’t figure out what caused it. 4 days later when i went back in for my shift one of my co-workers informed me of the caffeine content in the lemonade and i was SHOCKED. i couldn’t believe that they weren’t openly displaying that the lemonade had the same ammount of caffeine as a damn energy drink. people’s kids would drink it and so would the elderly.
i don’t work there anymore but i’m so thankful this is finally being talked about.
yeah and if you tell the parents; they wont care; fucking sad how brainwashed people are by marketing
I have to say that personally i have a really crazy caffeine tolerance and have drank nearly 2,000 mg of it in the past for example and been completely ok but tbh reading these comments and hearing about how lots of people with heart conditions drank this lemonade because it wasnt labeled as highly caffeinated, im very bothered by the purely idiotic negligence of this panera company, even though some people like me love drinking highly caffeinated stuff, doesnt mean everyone is into it and certainly if people with serious health conditions aren't being warned about the risks of what they are about to put into their body it really makes me upset at this company because i have a hatred for this sort of thing, it's really scumbaggy decision making on behalf of a big company like this to just not inform people because somehow they are gonna very slightly increase their profits. Its not only stupid but it's completely reckless and absolutely wrong
thats insane. The max you can legally sell in pre-workout is 400mg of caffeine, and the FDA says you shouldn't have more than 400mg a day....so the fact this item is on the sip club is nuts. imagine buying a tea and it's a blasted preworkout drink.
I watched the Food Theory on this lemonade a while ago. Stuff has a criminally high amount of caffeine, higher than some marketed energy drinks. I have no idea how they are getting away with it, they're jumping through so many legal loopholes.
Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)
i too watched that video
this is not a surprising result.....do any companies listen to warnings? i don't think so
and drinks/food usually go through a testing phase to make sure they’re safe to eat/drink. idk how they got past it
Who said they're getting away with it? They're being sued. Multiple times.
@user-zu1kz4oh8z you've been warned
Matpat did an episode on these Charge Lemonades.
I'm honestly surprised there were only 2 Casualties so far.
OK So. I worked at a panera bread for ages, was part of the primary staff that opened one here in WA, listen. do not order any thing like lemonade, tea, or soda at panera bread and get bottled drinks or espresso coffee only, they do not properly clean their equipment or tanks and you will get sick, I worked and helped open numerous panera breads in WA and knew about a sweeping issue in various places of the good ole usa, do not drink these things.
I can second this, there was only two people, myself included, that actually cleaned them properly. I also used to drink a charged lemonade while I was at work and more times than not I felt worse during my shift then i would’ve if I didn’t.
Anyway it’s great to run into another old Panera worker lol
I love that you're reporting that in a RUclips comment section and not to the proper people so something can actually be done about it.
Didn’t ask + Charlie steals my content so he can get more money and views (MAKING FUN OF BOTS)
🤢🤢
@@HotDogBunN2YGyou think they would do something?
I had drank a large sized cups worth of charged lemonade and had a massive anxiety attack and at first didn’t even understand why I was reacting that way. But then I realized my heart was beating at a mile a minute and I felt freezing, that’s when realized I was basically having a caffeine overdose. I cannot stress how unassuming these drinks are too. They taste like normal lemonade if not better, there’s no warning label or anything, just a sign with the name, and the caffeine content written quite small under it. Please stay safe and don’t get this drink
That's because you don't read. The menu in all panera clearly states that the drink has as much caffein as their dark roast coffee and anyone with a brain can understand that it's an oz by oz comparison. Since 8oz of coffee is about 60mg-140mg and the minimum size of the drink is 20z that's at minimum 150mg of caffein.
@@hirotakasugi4891Bro quit spamming
Ur mom. Angry because can't read lol.@@peteryeeterson5766
@@hirotakasugi4891anyone with a brain wouldn't assume that they put so much caffeine on a drink that has a totally different function, and that they offer with large cups. That amount of caffeine is dangerous even for normal people with no cardiac conditions
@@shicox8364 What function does a lemonade? It’s a drink. It a vehicle for anything. Your argument is made by someone who doesn’t have a brain lol.
Did you even think about what you just said? And if you’re ordering shit especially for the first time, aren’t you reading the menu? Cause I sure do.
“Function of a drink so it shouldn’t have x” 😂
I was addicted to caffeine and my doctor advised me to either quit it all together by weaning myself slowly or limit my intake to one coffee once a week.
I would drink a pot of coffee a day. With some espressos from the coffee shops on my lunch break.
Caffeine is no joke. So is caffeine addiction.
What I would drink in one day is LESS caffeine than that one lemonade.
That’s insane.
mfw 400mg was a morning routine for me
That's genuinely scary. Hope you're doing better now
Thank you for that comparison. I hope you’re doing better now .
@@zack-lk8ifSame man, guess I’m not caffeine sensitive or I’d probably be dead. At my absolute worst I was probably downing 600-800mg daily. Now I’m down to 200mg or less.
Christ. A single fluid cup of coffee every morning was enough to give me jitters, tunnel vision, headaches, stomach pain, and lethargy after like a week. I'm pretty sure the amount you had would kill me.
I remember when these first came out and I went to Panera and drank 2 larges bc I thought it was normal lemonade. I’ve never been more cracked out in my life. I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and I could barely breathe, and I drink caffeine on a regular basis.
I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m very glad you’re still here.