Making coffee takes time. Some people don’t want to wait.  For them, there is an option.

For many residents of Kazakhstan, uppers have substituted coffee. Teenagers love them most of others.  When there is not much time left for sleep, while you need to attend a coach, finish your homework and do something you really like, an upper, a sweet drink, you can consume anywhere and anytime, will help you out.  Vendors easily sell uppers to juveniles, thus encouraging them to drink more of them.

The composition of uppers may seem innocent – sugar, water, vitamins and taurine. Actually, there is one more ingredient there – caffeine, but what is bad about it, if they allow you drink coffee at home?  Prices for those “energy drinks”, but they are acceptable. You can find yourself a can for KZT 200, and for KZT 2000, t00, — depending on the company and the volume. Some teenagers buy bigger cans, so to have the assured effect.  But they do not fully realize, what the consequences could be. Let us try to dig what nutrition experts, Ministry of Healthcare and legislators think about uppers. 

Chemistry Lessons

Experts from the National Public Healthcare Center (NPHC) identified that 3% of the underaged drink uppers every day (!), and 17.5% of them do it 5-6 times a week. Those experts interviewed 8.5 thousand students aged 11-15 in 20 provinces of Kazakhstan.

NPHC highlights that teenagers develop addiction, and that uppers are of detriment to the organism, but uppers still are readily available in trade networks and stores. Besides, uppers have a lot in common with narcotics and electronic cigarettes, which two products are prohibited for use by those underaged, because of their chemical composition. 

Let us start from caffeine. Daily consumption dosage of caffeine is limited, depending on the age and the physical condition of a user. An adult may easily consume up to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day, which amount equals two cups of instant coffee. Pregnant women may consume twice as less – not more than 200 milligrams a day. Children should consume not more than 50-100 milligrams of caffeine a day, while, when it comes to teenagers, their daily dosage depends on the weight – 2.2 milligrams per 1 kilogram.

Gastritis to Coffin

One should not binge uppers, can after can. One should take 4-5 hour pauses in between consumption runs.  Nutrition experts call absurdity willingness to drink uppers early in the morning to cheer up. By the morning, our bodies already have generated certain volumes of energy, while the inflow of energetics from outside only depletes those natural reserves. Additional “kick” creates additional load on the cardio-vascular system, as well as organs of urination. If people overdose themselves by consuming uppers in the morning on regular basis, they will guarantee gastritis, cardio-vascular diseases, disorders of digestive organs and hypertension. Some people don’t even make it to gastritis and die from heart attacks.  Numerous cases of the kind were observed all over the world. 

Bitter Prospects

Another, nonetheless hazardous component is sugar. A standard, 330 milliliter can of an energetic contains tens of spoons of sugar, while nutrition experts recommend to consume not more than 12 tea-spoons of sugar a day for adults, and not more than 9 of same for children. Drinking an upper can, adults and children exceed recommended daily sugar consumption dosages and then only make it worse, drinking tea with sugar.

The most innocent impact of all is the destruction of the dental enamel.  Sugar and acid are the best agents for that. If a person consumes soda drinks on regular basis, the phosphorus present in those drinks will wash out calcium from the organism, thus causing fragility of bones and higher risk of traumatism.

Another bitter implication of regular consumption of uppers and soda is obesity and sugar diabetes. People fond of those drinks over-saturate their bodies with sugar, and their organisms cease to develop necessary hormones in the natural way.

Nothing, But Name

Drinkers of energetic drinks particularly love them for bubbles that tickle their tongues and run to top of glasses in the most fascinating way. That is because of CO₂, which gas saturates any upper drink. That gas is far from being innocent. Together with water, it forms carbonic acid, which acid is hazardous to digestive organs and may cause fissures.

As to taurine, contained in the discussed beverages, there is no scientific data that would confirm its hazard or positive effect. As for the vitamins, that come together with other ingredients, they turn out of no use to organism. 

Taboo is No Remedy?

Different countries practice different approaches to those drinks. In 2014, Latvia and Lithuania prohibited sales of them to teenagers. In 2020, Azerbaijan did the same.

Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan also prohibit sales of uppers to those underaged. Turkmenistan imposed full ban on imports of uppers. Kyrgyzstan plans on doing the same. 

What laws do we need? On one side, we can limit sales of uppers to the underaged, but we may face the same situation as with the alcohol.  By law, we do not sell alcohol to those under 21, but youngsters try it long before the age of 18. The same is with tobacco. Domestic experts believe that prohibitions and bans will not work. We need a more complex approach. First of all, we must ban advertisement of soda drinks on TV.  We, also, need to impose more taxes on those commodities.  That will make them more expensive and less available to children.