US Teenager Has Died From Consuming Too Much Caffeine

A U.S. teen died last month from drinking too many caffeinated drinks within a short time frame.

The Richland county coroner, Gary Watts, said that Davis Allen Cripe, a 16-year-old boy from South Carolina, drank one latte from McDonald’s, an energy drink and a 600ml bottle of Mountain Dew within two hours.

The Guardian has reported an estimate from caffeineinformer.com that would equate this to around 570mg of caffeine. That is about 170mg above the recommendations provided by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

While Watts explained that Cripe's death was caused by a "caffeine-induced cardiac event", he said that it was not a caffeine overdose.

"We’re not saying that it was the total amount of caffeine in the system, it was just the way that it was ingested over that short period of time," said Watts.

It's not the first caffeine-related incident to turn sour in recent times. In 2015, two students were hospitalised after they were accidentally given a beverage that contained the caffeine equivalent of 300 cups of coffee instead of three cups.

Thankfully, they both survived after days in intensive care.

Remember that the recommended daily dose of caffeine isn’t very high and usually two-to-three cups of coffee will get you there. You can read the guide for recommended daily intake amounts here.

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