On Dakota Johnson’s first day preparing to make her first film Loser Baby, she picked up a can of Celsius and started drinking. He said he spent most of the film with Celsius in his hand. He remembered feeling happy, and although he also had trouble sleeping, it was definitely an inspiration from the creative process flowing through his body.
Then her costume designer lets her in on a secret: Celsius is a soft drink with 200mg of caffeine per can. That’s why he stayed awake all night.
“In the background it’s like, ‘B12, Vitamin A’. I thought it was vitamins,” Johnson later admitted to Variety. I didn’t realize I was actually overdosing on caffeine. .
Johnson isn’t the only person who confuses Celsius for a health drink based on its packaging.
Celsius credits itself as an exercise supplement without sugar and artificial preservatives. Drink it and, according to the label, you’ll get a “vital energy” boost that “accelerates metabolism” and “burns body fat”.
But turn the can over, and in the fine print you’ll see that it contains 200mg of caffeine. That’s the equivalent of two cups of coffee, or about six cans of Coke. It corresponds to the Prime energy drink, which was under the wrath of Chuck Schumer last year: in a letter to the FDA, the New York senator demanded an investigation into the condition of Prime “eye-popping” of caffeine.
“I didn’t know it was like Red Bull,” said Johnson. I thought it was a natural drink.
If Red Bull is shorthand for Formula 1 racing teams and hard-partying college students, and Prime is associated with YouTubers selling caffeine to teenage boys, Celsius beats in a different category – and Johnson may be its avatar.
How Celsius conquered women
For decades, energy drinks such as Monster, Red Bull and caffeinated and alcoholic Four Loko catered to the interests of young men.
“These drinks were associated with energy, extreme sports, girls in bikinis,” said Frances Fleming-Milici, who studies energy drink marketing at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and good health. Another 2015 study found that men who valued masculinity were more likely to believe that drinking alcohol made them more masculine.
Celsius follows the playbook – to an extent. The brand has worked with YouTuber and professional boxer Jake Paul (an obvious choice given that his brother, Logan Paul, put his name on Prime), Nascar drivers and college football stars (this, although the NCAA’s ban on high levels of stimulants includes guarana, a plant product found in Celsius and other energy drinks). But it seems Celsius is looking for power outside of man caves and sporting events. How did it win over women? By simplifying its image and tapping into the multi-billion dollar health industry.
Celsius’s white cans feature fun images of fresh fruit, images of people exercising and the inspirational slogan “Live Fit” – nothing like the fighting bulls or grisly claw symbols on Red Bull and Monster . There is no mention of caffeine on the front of the can, and instead of “energy drink”, Celsius uses the simple phrase “vital energy”.
On TikTok, most of the followers of the word of the drink are young women wearing expensive sports clothes who like to exercise. See Celsius helps them fuel their workout days or fuel their 3pm workouts. The brand’s Instagram feeds show DJ and Sports Illustrated swimming model Xandra Pohl drinking Celsius in the pool, and Olympic champion Tara Davis-Woodhall drinking from a can between reps.
“The slim design, the choice of color on the bottle and the influences they chose to promote it show that there’s a healthy lifestyle around it,” said Fleming-Milici, “which I think it’s worrying, because it makes people not realize how much caffeine they’re consuming.”
Representatives for Celsius did not respond to a request for comment.
In an interview with Fortune, John Fieldly, CEO of Celsius, mentioned the success of the business – last year, it made $1.3bn – to change this marketing strategy. Initially, Celsius relied on “being more scientific”, presenting itself as a “thermogenic” drink with a “negative-calorie” effect. But during the pandemic, the company adapted to health and lifestyle, sending out franchises like Barry’s Bootcamp and working with first responders like nurses and police.
“The liquid has to go through the ingredients in the can,” Fieldly said. “We want Celsius to be like the Apple logo, or the Starbucks logo, or the unique Monster Energy claw.”
It’s on the way: Celsius is now the third largest beverage company in the United States. And a cult following has sprung up among health-conscious women. For them, Celsius serves as an essential tool for cool girls with lots of time. Its anti-woke podcast Red Scare even jokingly referred to it as an alternative to cocaine in a recent episode.
‘Celsius glasses are you all right?’
Jill Lewis, a 58-year-old publicist based in Toronto, calls herself a “Celsius convert”. It’s been about a month since he ate, after drinking five or six cans a day for two or three years.
“If I was hungry, instead of having a snack I would have Celsius and feel full,” Lewis said.
Lewis started drinking Celsius because the brand promised to boost his metabolism and provide kicking energy. He said: “I work out all the time, and I’m always looking for hacks. It wasn’t until one of Lewis’ older children told him to stop drinking that he realized that it is not a good life as he thought before.
A doctor told the New York Post that strong drinks like Celsius can speed up your metabolism in the short term but are unlikely to give lasting results; experts also say that energy drinks have a limited, if any, effect on weight loss and should be supplemented with a balanced diet and exercise. (Celsius’ six studies published on its website supporting its claims of metabolism-boosting and calorie-burning effects are backed by the brand.) This hasn’t stopped the TikTok boom from taking off. happened last year that accuses Celsius, sold around. $3 a can, which contains semaglutide, the active ingredient in the expensive diabetes drug Ozempic.
This summer, the Wall Street Journal published an account of young women with eating disorders who drank Celsius to feel full without eating the right foods. The head of adolescent medicine at the Cleveland Clinic told the Journal that a third of patients with eating disorders in the hospital use energy drinks. (Celsius declined to comment on the piece; it doesn’t market itself as a food stand.)
Online, some Celsius drinkers say the product’s high caffeine content doesn’t make them feel good. One woman wrote on TikTok, saying: “Celsius drinks are good. I just had my first drink and it made my body go crazy.” In other videos posted on the app, people have reported feeling tired and experiencing headaches and heart palpitations when trying to stop taking Celsius.
Dr. Siyab Panhwar, an interventional cardiologist at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center in Minnesota, said these could be symptoms of caffeine withdrawal.
Stimulants such as caffeine increase a person’s blood pressure and adrenaline levels. Other ingredients such as taurine and guarana extract – both present in Celsius – can enhance the effects of caffeine. “It sends you into that fight-or-flight mode, and that’s where people feel more empowered,” Panhwar said.
The FDA says it’s safe for a healthy person to consume about 400mg of caffeine a day, which is about four cups of coffee. “Imagine if one or two cups of coffee make you cranky,” Panhwar added. “Drinking soft drinks will make it worse, and drinking several cans a day for a long time can be very difficult.” The makers of Celsius advise consumers not to have more than two cans a day.
The FDA does not limit caffeine in energy drinks because it considers them to be dietary supplements. The only such limit exists for cola-type drinks such as Coke or Pepsi. Jennifer L Temple, director of the nutrition and health research laboratory at the University at Buffalo, believes that’s a problem.
“It doesn’t make sense to me that the FDA says the upper limit of caffeine in Coke is 71mg per 12 ounces, but there is no upper limit for a drink like Celsius, Red Bull or Prime,” he said. Temple.
As for whether Celsius is a vitamin rich drink Johnson thought it was: the drink contains vitamins C and B12. However, consumers settled a class-action lawsuit against the brand last year, saying the label misled them because it said the drink contained “preservatives” when it did not contain citric acid. (Celsius said citric acid was added for flavor.)
Lewis kicked off his Celsius routine before taking a detox trip to the spa. It was not difficult to do so. “I’m good at walking the cold road. I did that with smoking after university,” Lewis said. You just ignore the symptoms.
However, when he visits New York for work, he will sometimes enter a supermarket, see many rows of Celsius soft drinks for sale, and feel overwhelmed. He said: “I wonder: ‘Should I get it?’ “Well, I wish they were good to me.”
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