Panera Charged Lemonade has people fired up right now – both after drinking it and online.
If you happened to miss out on the origin of the jokes online, it actually comes from a couple of rather sad stories.
According to reports, two different people have died after drinking Panera Bread’s caffeine and sugar-infused lemonade drinks.
Both are believed to have suffered from prior conditions that were made worse by consuming the drink, with some claiming that Panera did not properly warn consumers of the high levels of caffeine and sugar.
The best way to understand just how bad these “charged lemonade” drinks are is to watch this video below, which was actually posted online a year before the two deaths were reported.
This woman tells the story of how she was unaware of how potentially dangerous the drinks were, and how she had no idea why she felt “like the Hulk” after she drank a couple of them (Panera offers free refills).
Still visibly and audibly affected by the high levels of caffeine and sugar, the woman (who works from a Panera, not at a Panera) claims the drinks should be illegal, saying:
“I was always like ‘Man, when I work at Panera, I feel great. I feel awesome. I get so much done.’ My husband, he’s a type one diabetic, we’re going through the drive thru because I wanted one.
He said ‘Oh, I want some,’ and so he went to look up the nutritional facts about the drink so he could have some and adjust his blood sugar.
The regular size has 82 grams of sugar. Whatever, let’s push that aside. It has 260 milligrams of caffeine. An espresso, I looked it up, has 63 milligrams of caffeine. 63 for one shot of espresso. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t have caffeine very much..I thought.”
One REGULAR sized Panera Charged Lemonade (and who in America is drinking a regular sized drink?) has the equivalent caffeine of FOUR SHOTS of espresso.
And a large? It has nearly 400 mg of caffeine, which is the maximum that’s recommended for a person to consume in a single day. So if you go back for a refill, you’re basically rolling the dice.
That’s an unbelievable amount of caffeination, especially since it seems that Panera was not properly warning people about it.
And in the natural way that people nowadays handle sad and scary situations, instead of being mad at Panera for their “death drinks,” social media has instead decided to crack a bunch of jokes about the whole entire thing:
