CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Energy drinks are becoming an increasingly important topic in public health, nutrition and food policy, with global sales more than doubling from 2018-2023 and product selection expanding by 20% since 2021.
Just as sales of the drinks have surged, so has their caffeine content, elevating concerns about childhood energy drink consumption. A new paper co-written by experts in food marketing and food policy from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Tennessee Knoxville gauges the U.S. public’s preferences for and perceptions of energy drink policies and marketing.
“Although public health researchers and governmental agencies acknowledge that children are consuming energy drink products and have warned against childhood energy drink consumption, we have little information on how the public believes these concerns should be addressed,” says Maria Kalaitzandonakes, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at Illinois.
The U.S. is the leading energy drink market and relies heavily on voluntary industry standards, she said.
“We were interested in better understanding how the public feels about policies surrounding energy drink markets, particularly those aimed at addressing concerns over childhood energy drink consumption,” said Aaron Staples, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
The study used experimental and survey data from a national panel of more than 1,000 adults to assess consumer preferences and perceptions toward energy drink policies and marketing in the U.S.
“We focused on adult perceptions because their roles as both voters and constituents can inform policy decisions at the state and federal level,” Kalaitzandonakes said.
The researchers found that respondents had the strongest preference for mandatory and prominently displayed caffeine content labels on energy drinks.
“These results highlight public support for improved labeling, which would be one potential policy initiative that could create uniformity across the energy drink industry,” Kalaitzandonakes said.
“This is especially important because the marketing results from our paper show that it took the average respondent more than twice as long to find the caffeine content on current energy drinks versus the calorie count on the same products,” Staples said. “The calorie count is a standardized, prominent label, so people are used to knowing where to look for it. The caffeine content doesn’t have this same standardization, where the font size and location of the information vary across products. Standardization might improve consumer use of the label and their overall caffeine content awareness.”
Staples and Kalaitzandonakes also sought to evaluate the role of public health campaigns on policy preferences. Their results show that providing respondents with governmental information on the potential health risks of childhood energy drink consumption increased support for more targeted policies. For example, the additional government information increased support for banning sales of energy drinks to children in grocery and convenience stores.
The researchers also explored public beliefs surrounding responsibility, assessing who respondents thought should take more responsibility to ensure children don’t consume caffeinated beverages.
“While we found that most respondents thought that the government, food companies and schools all have a role to play in restricting children’s access, the majority of respondents believe that parents should be most responsible,” Kalaitzandonakes said. “This can be tricky if parents aren’t aware of the level of caffeine or don’t know their children are consuming them.”
The implications of the research suggest that the public supports a variety of potential policy mechanisms.
“Energy drinks are a quickly growing and evolving market,” Staples said. “Our work, which aims to understand the public’s policy preferences, can help inform the discussions policymakers, public health experts and the industry as they navigate this issue.”
The paper was published in the journal Food Policy.
