Cardiologists have called for an independent health review of energy drink sponsorships that reach young athletes, in a peer-reviewed article that names the Big 12 Conference partnership with Monster Energy as an example raising youth marketing concerns. The review appears in The American Journal of Medicine and was written by a group led by John P. Higgins, a sports cardiologist at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and the Memorial Hermann Institute for Sports Medicine and Human Performance.
The authors make a framing argument before a clinical one. Energy drinks are stimulant formulations rather than sports drinks, they write, yet the products are increasingly embedded in adolescent athletics, gaming, and social media. Most contain substantial amounts of caffeine, along with taurine, guarana, and other bioactive ingredients whose combined effects may differ from those of caffeine alone.
