As a company, RedBull is pretty hard to bash.
I mean, how can you hate on a company that sponsors some of the most exciting and creative pieces of entertainment around?
Seriously, let’s take a moment to admire the laundry list of cool shit they’ve brought to the masses:
- Crashed Ice (link)
- Their amazing F1 Team
- Air Races (link)
- Felix Baumgartner’s freefall from space (link)
- Base Jumping (link)
- Rebull Rampage – prepare to crap your pants (link)
- Extreme Sailing – it’s more fun that it sounds! (link)
- Soapbox racing (link)
- And so much more…
They also have one of the most amazing office spaces ever conceived by man.
Does your workplace come with a slide? Didn’t think so.
But all of this credit should go to their marketing department.
In fact, that’s pretty much what RedBull is — a marketing company that happens to sell some sugar water with a bit of caffeine.
My mistake, overpriced sugar water with caffeine.
Sure, it may have other ingredients like Taurine, and B Vitamins but that’s all for show, as a new study recently revealed.
Let’s dive into it and see what they found.
The Study Design
The researchers wanted to see whether RedBull — as a formulated drink, had any benefits over taking caffeine by itself to increase performance. I should point out that caffeine has already been proven as a stimulant that increases work output, so I was very curious about this head-to-head comparison.
The subjects were (thankfully) a group of trained cyclists with an average VO2 max of around 60 (this is a very good score, it shows they have some serious cardio).
The reason this excites me is because too many researchers conduct studies on an untrained population – on whom pretty much any protocol can show a favorable result.
For example: take a freshman high-school kid who’s never touched a weight in his life and teach him how to lift a few times a week, and he’ll put on like 10 pounds of muscle in the span of 60 days.
Or give someone who’s never been exposed to caffeine a cup of coffee, and they’ll be bouncing off the walls.
In short, the untrained population don’t make very good cases for the “real world.” So the fact that these researchers actually took the time to recruit real athletes shows they care.
The 3 Drinks Involved
The cyclists were divided up into 3 groups, and each were randomly given either RedBull, a placebo or a drink with the exact same amount of caffeine content, but nothing else.
As this was a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, it meant that no one really knew which group was taking what until the end.
This is a good thing, because it means no one could mess with the results or partake in any shenanigans. Another point goes to the researches for this.
The Study Results
Compared to placebo (which was probably just sugar water), RedBull increased performance by an average of 2.8%. This isn’t bad considering they were trained athletes and in cycling, even a second or two can make the difference between 1st and 2nd place. So a near 3 percent bump is legit.
However, the group that took straight caffeine showed an increase in performance by 3.1% compared to placebo.
Initially, This Might Not Seem Earth-Shattering. But Then You Look At The Cost…
A can of RedBull has about 80–90mg of caffeine and costs $2.99.
Well, a regular cup of coffee has 100–110mg of caffeine costs anywhere from 50 cents to $1 (ignoring your trips to Starbucks, of course).
In fact, the cost per gram of caffeine can be lowered even further if you buy in bulk, and brew a cup yourself. Not to mention that coffee is loaded with antioxidants and has shown to help burn fat, decrease risk of Parkinson’s disease and provide a whole host of benefits that would take me an entire article to cover.
Bottom Line?
Most of the performance/benefits that you experience from RedBull (or any energy drink for that matter) is usually related to its caffeine content.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re getting something magical. Most of the time the trace amounts of extra ingredients listed are merely a marketing tactic.
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