Numlock Sunday: Dave Infante on the energy drink explosion

Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Dave Infante, who wrote “Caffeination Nation: America’s rising addition to caffeine has fueled a $21B energy drinks industry” for Sherwood News. Here's what I wrote about it:

Last year the energy drinks segment was up 10 percent at chain retailers, with sales hitting $21 billion. One of the roots of the trend was the simple increase in the amount of caffeine in beverages over time, as well as the reality that “energy drinks” are not an actual category of beverage in the eyes of the FDA, hence a lack of strict requirements reining in what goes into them. As of 2006, the top five energy drinks had an average caffeine concentration of 9.9 milligrams per ounce, a figure that as of 2023 was up to 13 mg per ounce. For perspective, soda has been held at 5.91 mg per ounce since 1980 by the FDA.

We spoke about how the market has developed over the past few decades, the American palat…