Are Energy Drinks Becoming Natural?

摘要

Modern lifestyle is encompassing longer working hours, more complex family lives with the need for capturing both, career and caring for the family, reduced time for leisure, lack of sleep, and less time for preparing healthy nutrition. All of these factors are impacting the energy state in daily life at multiple levels. Mental energy, alertness as well as wide-awakeness are very relevant topics for a wide range of the working population. Getting older and working longer in a work environment that is more challenging and demanding nowadays. It often coincides with a significant increase in exhibition of stress symptoms ranging from feeling irritable, angry, nervous or anxious to unmotivated, fatigued and lacking energy, as shown in a recent study (APA, 2014). Modern lifestyle are being combined with the megatrends of striving for more natural, healthy and less artificial nutrition in general and the rising interest in botanical and herbal ingredients, just like the ancient phytogenic rem- edies used in the traditional Asian medicine (TCM or Ayurveda).These needs and trends are defining much more complex demands in the energy food & beverage market, and pushing a much broader segment than before. Rising health concerns about the high caffeine levels, as well as the high sugar content are also creating demands for alternative energy ingredients, providing more sustainable and controlled energy sources, without causing any jitters or crashes.