UK Food Standards Agency issues new caffeine guidelines after man’s tragic death

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/uk-food-standards-agency-issues-33750924

Posted by Forward-Answer-4407

17 Comments

  1. >The agencies emphasised that exceptionally concentrated forms of caffeine, such as powders, can be “extremely potent” and urged adherence to the labelled dosage instructions using precise measuring tools

    This has nothing to do with how much coffee you drink.

  2. CraftyAttitude1321 on

    A lethal does of caffeine only looks about the size of a ping pong ball if you were to see it up close and concentrated. Quite scary when you increase the concentrations.

  3. I’m a coffee drinker myself. I have maybe three or four cups a day. There’s 40mg of caffeine in a coffee, on average. If I drink much more, I can’t sleep at night, or if I have a few cups in a short time, I get a bit jittery and I can feel my jaw clenching.

    Some energy drinks have upwards of 200mg of caffeine in them. That is an insane amount of caffeine to ingest in one sitting. I know people who drink multiple cans of that in a day. Nobody needs that much caffeine. It will wreak havoc on your cardiovascular system, it’s such a bad thing to do to your body, even short-term.

    I’d encourage anyone who drinks caffeine daily to measure your intake and keep it below 200mg over the course of an entire day. If you’re consuming that much just to function, you need to detox and let your tolerance to it get back to a sensible level.

    And for fuck sake, stop buying your kids energy drinks.

  4. >Mr. Mansfield attempted to measure between 60mg and 300mg of the substance with a scale designed for a range of 2g to 5kg, which led to his ingesting too much caffeine.

    That sounds like death by misadventure.

    But there is probably a case for restricting the sale of pure caffeine.

  5. Brave_Minimum9741 on

    Article says he was a Fitness instructor or a personal trainer. Makes me think the guy had a bit of experience, and he could probably tolerate a high dose.

    But I’ve heard of people mis dosing caffeine powder before when mixing their own pre-workouts. Buying bulk stock of different powders. Some of which a 5g dose will kill you.

    5g? That’s those little baby scoops you get in creatine packets. And if your packaging is just white labels. And the powders are all white. Well, you might just find yourself dosing 5g of caffeine and 200mg of creatine. And dead. Rip thoughts to the family.

  6. I use to drink loads of coffee, but lack of sleep or the jitters crept in if I had several cups. The sleep thing was the main reason for scaling down, but some additional walking helped as well.

    Now I drink coffee AM and then decaf PM at work. When I’m at home with the bean to cup machine, then it’s on half a bean out of five setting, a weak latte.

    Can’t believe how much this guy had!

  7. Apropos to nothing but I just gave up caffeine after drinking it for 50 years. Cola at first and then in coffee, it was a really hard 6 weeks detoxing, some days it was hell with zero energy. My eyesight went from ok before, then went super sharp for a bit, then deteriorated badly and has just come back to normal again.

    Skin has cleared up, and my sleep patterns went insanely complicated, but just started settling down. I was sometimes falling asleep an hour after waking up, but just for a half hour snooze, sometimes 3 daytime snoozes a day.

    Caffeine is an insanely powerful drug.

  8. Not related to the this article but people should look at how caffeine actually works in the brain. It blocks the receptors from the chemicals your body releases to help you rest, giving you a false sense of energy. Your body still needs rest but it’s natural way of getting you to rest has been stopped. This is why you can feel more tired after the caffeine has worn off.

  9. Havjng OD’d on coffee twice – proven by bloodtests first time (3 days later having stayed off of cafinated substances during that period), second time by an EKG as I thought I was having a heart attack potentially resting heart rate of 120+ for 2 hours – this is because the deceased couldn’t measure something accurately by the sounds of it and was attempting a “controlled” OD? Is there any need for the FSA to issue guidelines, surely it’s a case of don’t be a dick (e.g. I don’t do more than 2 proper cups per day now & at worst a coke with dinner).

  10. “Tom Mansfield, a father of two and fitness trainer from Colwyn Bay in Wales, passed away in January 2021 due to an overdose when taking a quantity of caffeine powder equivalent to around 200 cups of coffee. Mr. Mansfield attempted to measure between 60mg and 300mg of the substance with a scale designed for a range of 2g to 5kg, which led to his ingesting too much caffeine.”

    Jesus christ, that’ll obviously kill you

  11. I use caffeine in some of the homemade cordials I make like cola and “iron brew” and you bet I have a dedicated scale that can measure to 3 decimal places of a gram as that stuff will fuck you up.

    Even accidentally inhaling a bit of the powder when you open the packet can give you heart palpitations.

    Do not fuck around with pure caffeine.

  12. External-Piccolo-626 on

    I’m always staggered by the amount of people that don’t seem to be able to function without a coffee or red bull in the morning. Something is seriously wrong somewhere along the line.