New Delhi: The food regulatory body of Pakistan’s Punjab province has ordered all energy drink manufacturers – including the popular Red Bull – to stop using the word ‘energy’ on their labels because it misleads consumers.
In a notice on May 1, the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) said that companies must use the word “stimulant” rather than “energy”, The News reported, and mention that the drinks are “highly caffeinated”. In addition, the labels must make clear in both Urdu and English that these drinks are not suitable for children under 12 years of age, pregnant women and those allergic to caffeine.
The scientific advisory panel of the PFA has said that ‘energy’ does not correctly describe what the beverages provide, The Guardian reported. Instead of providing the body with nutritional energy, these drinks – and the caffeine and taurine contained in them – stimulate the swift release of existing reserves, the PFA has said.
“In TV commercials [drinkers] throw huge tires, they keep running and running,” PFA director Noorul Amin Mengal told The Guardian. “These advertisements are misleading our illiterate population.”
Companies have also been asked to ensure that the amount of caffeine in the beverages is less than 200 parts per million, The News reported. That’s about half the amount of caffeine that Red Bull contains at the moment.
There’s another reason why Pakistan is keen to regulate these drinks, Mengal told the The Guardian. A study in 2017 found that energy drinks increase blood pressure five times more than the same amount of caffeine ingested through coffee. Since Pakistan has one of the highest rates of heart disease globally, that’s an important concern.
The authority has given companies that sell approximately 312 million cans of energy drinks each year in Pakistan’s Punjab eight months to adhere to these guidelines completely.
“As a responsible international company, Red Bull complies with all relevant laws affecting its product in each of the 170 countries across the world in which it is on sale,” the Guardian quoted a Red Bull spokesperson as saying.
Pakistan isn’t the first country to announce regulations for what are known as energy drinks. In Turkey, for instance, the agriculture ministry has banned the sale or advertisement of these drinks at sports complexes, schools or hospitals. In addition, the sale of energy drinks is prohibited to those under 18 years of age.
Like the Punjab province has done now, Turkey has also said that labels must include potential threats to children, the elderly, diabetics, those with high blood pressure, pregnant women and those with kidney problems.
Lawmakers in the US’s South Carolina are currently discussing whether to ban the sale of energy drinks to minors, a debate that was sparked by the death of teenager last year linked to the consumption of caffeine.
The consumption of energy drinks in the UK is extremely high, including among children. To mitigate that, most large retail chains in the country have said that they will not be selling these drinks to those under the age of 16.
Any drink that has more than 150 mg of caffeine per litre being sold in the country also has to have the following warning on the label: “High caffeine content. Not recommended for children or pregnant or breastfeeding women or persons sensitive to caffeine.”