FDA To Review Inhalable Caffeine 172
First time accepted submitter RenderSeven writes "Manufacturing.net reports that U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials plan to investigate whether inhalable caffeine sold in lipstick-sized canisters is safe for consumers and if its manufacturer was right to brand it as a dietary supplement. AeroShot went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and it's also available in France. Consumers put one end of the canister in their mouths and breathe in, releasing a fine powder that dissolves almost instantly."
Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Instant jitters and an easy way to dose higher than you'd expect.
~S
Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
not to mention it's incredibly expensive. i computed it once, iirc it's about 100x as expensive as no-name caffeine pills, and 200x more expensive than bulk anhydrous powder. about its only upside would be that it's maybe harder to overdose, if the effects are actually immediate (which i'm not sure about).
i can only imagine that this is due to some drug war-stigma against pills. maybe it's for women; studies have shown that women prefer to insufflate their drugs.
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i can only imagine that this is due to some drug war-stigma against pills.
Because inhaling something has never been mixed with the drug war.
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well, no, not from a dispenser. i think the point is that you have plausible cover that it's an asthma inhaler or something.
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Hey, Chong, wanna do a line of some Peruvian Espresso?
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So why are we dicking around with caffeine?
One is a lot less likely to go to jail for using or being caught with caffeine. However, until more people are used to seeing such a thing, I'd say away from using it in front of cops. BTW, it's still resisting arrest if you don't immediately comply to being hauled into jail and/or hospital, even if it's legal, also be careful (if you can) about where and when you seizures from over use, as it's possible for them to call it resisting.
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
WCPGW
I used to have a chemlab-grade bottle of pure caffeine. It had no less than 8 different warning labels on it telling you how it could (and most likely would) kill you. Most people don't understand how small a 'real' amount of Caffeine they are consuming. In amounts the equivalent of say, snorting a line of cocaine, you would cause *serious damage. What's to keep your average marker-sniffing high school student from cracking these open and going to town (and then to the hospital)?
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
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All chemicals destined for the lab have insane warning labels.
Yea, but lab grade caffeine powder really is dangerous.
The recommended dose is something like 1/16th of a teaspoon.
A teaspoonfull is around 4 grams. That will put most of us in the hospital and will kill some light weights.
A tablespoon of pure caffeine powder is significantly on the wrong side of the LD50 for most of us.
You're better off not having pure caffeine powder in your home.
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Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
What's to keep your average marker-sniffing high school student from cracking these open and going to town (and then to the hospital)?
A fatal dose would cost about "three hundred" or so dollars and ripping all the canisters apart would take hours, I suppose. And probably more mechanical skill that your average stimulant addict.
Probably a "easier" way to poison someone, since foul play is expected if they find your blood full of rat poison, but if there's so much caffeine in your blood that its crystallized (slight exaggeration) then they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "I saw this on Oprah; kids these days; too bad"
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Heart palpitations in a healthy person are a full-scale heart-attack in someone with a heart defect.
They're just lucky no one huffing on these things has died yet. Even the manufacturer warns you about how easy it is to overdose with them.
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to put this into perspective, an entire inhaler of this stuff (300 mg) contains less caffeine than a 20 oz. ("venti") drip coffee from starbucks (~400 mg). this proves both that it is safe, and a rip-off.
no one is going to die from this.
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or they could crush caffeine pills, which is even easier and hasn't been a problem.
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or they could crush caffeine pills, which is even easier and hasn't been a problem.
No need for so much work and effort. You can buy it in bulk powder form pretty cheaply.
PureBulk [purebulk.com] lists it as $8.50 for 100g, $60 for 1kg, and up to 20kg for $700
The inhalers contain 300mg worth for $3. So at the smallest amount you can get in bulk, you get 100 times the caffeine for the same price.
The pills are cheaper than the inhalers by far, but still not as cheap as bulk powder.
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Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
In amounts [of caffeine] the equivalent of say, snorting a line of cocaine, you would cause *serious damage.
Citation please.
In my misspent youth circa the early 80s, there were commonly available "fake speed" caffeine pills circulating...made to look like real 'pink hearts' or 'black beauties'..which were sold legally and prominently advertised in High Times. And kids would bust them open and snort them, something I tried exactly once. It burned like hell, but nobody died, went to the hospital, or even got particularly high from them.
And just to look at numbers...the typical cup of coffee has 100mg of caffeine, a can of Jolt has 280mg. So 4 cans of Jolt is more damaging than ingesting a entire gram of pure cocaine? I don't see it.
Not that I'm saying approving this is a good idea, even as someone pretty heartily opposed to drug prohibition in all its forms. But I don't think the proposition that pure caffeine is more dangerous than cocaine stands up to the facts.
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The person above who said snorting a line of caffeine the size
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So 4 cans of Jolt is more damaging than ingesting a entire gram of pure cocaine? I don't see it.
Just try snorting 4 cans of Jolt. See if you live to tell the tale. Not only will your nasal septum dissolve, but you will likely melt all of your sinuses, tonsils, palate and tongue. Then your brain asplodes.
(It does sound like something someone on 'Jackass' would attempt, however.)
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What's to stop someone from drinking a pint of Draino with a few tsp of rat poison dissolved in it, swallowing the "decorative" mercury globule treat which is meant to be left at the bottom of the glass, gouging their eyes out with an un-safety-labeled spoon, and then walking to the nearest NRA convention holding a sign "I want to take your guns, but first let me hold your c
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It would be amusing for kids to think taking lots of these Aeroshots is cool, and after taking a bunch of them get the shits from the overdose of B vitamins
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"Each AeroShot will give you 4-6 puffs. You can choose to use it all at once or take a puff and save the rest for later."
I take it the professor who is marketing it thought of the downside and is confident of safety.
http://www.aeroshots.com/faq/ [aeroshots.com]
I don't think you are correct about B vitamins and I believe everyone should test your assertion throughly.
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Four Loko isn't actually a bad drink in my opinion, but they're so big and full of alcohol that I really don't want to drink more than one. However, there's the occasional idiot that will drink six and then die to it, but they're just as likely to snort pure caffeine powder if they had it and die anyway.
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All the more reason to scale back your Caffeine intake and find your actual threshold. I'm on green tea now and feeling a lot better, less antsy and hyperactive.
Can't imagine what some people are doing with all the caffeine they are ingesting, which isn't actually doing them much good, past the initial pick-me-up.
let's not even get into the hazards of inhaleable sugar and cream
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If Coca Cola replaced the caffeine in their brown sludge with cocaine it would have man
Snorting coffee? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Snorting coffee? (Score:5, Funny)
Been there, done that. The problem is that it keeps running back out of my nose and the fizzies make me sneeze.
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Next thing you know, they'll be snorting coke!
I'm sure they'll be banned for that reason. Cops/security guard/schoolteachers can't tell at a glance what has been reloaded into the canisters.
Snorting alcohol (Score:2)
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I've heard of teens putting vodka in vaporizers for faster highs. Its rather corrosive to sinus tissues.
Just stick your foot in a bucket of 100 pf Vodka - not only will you get intoxicated, it could clear up any foot fungus you have.
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Conclusion: Our results suggest that feet are impenetrable to the alcohol component of vodka. We therefore conclude that the Danish urban myth of being able to get drunk by submerging feet in alcoholic beverages is just that; a myth. The implications of the study are many though.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/14/vodka-tampon-teens_n_1092594.html
Note: Probably not true, but I could see more than a few people trying it after the media hype.
http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/vodka.asp
Some people even tried Jenkem for real after it hit the airwaves.
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It was that 'New Coke'. Didn't have a tenth the flavor or kick of the Classic.
Tony Montana.... (Score:2)
Caffeine Coccaine (Score:2)
Next you'll break open the canisters to get at the powder and snort line of Caffeine.
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Isn't pure caffeine powder deadly? I'm guessing this product doesn't actually contain "caffeine" powder or we'll hear about how some kid killed him/herself with a pack of these canisters.
Even worse ... its odorless, tasteless, and dissolves instantly in water. Thankfully most of us from the 80's generation have built up an immunity to it.
-LoPXTC
Re:Caffeine Coccaine (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds more like Iocane powder!
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Caffeine is quite bitter (it is an alkaloid) and moderately soluble in water.
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Its not tasteless, its actually quite bitter:
Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid.... [wikipedia.org]
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FDA review means little (Score:5, Interesting)
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Re:FDA review means little (Score:5, Interesting)
The FDA is a gimp government department. The only thing it can review in depth is approval for new drugs, and that's only because the corporations submitting the drugs have to pay for that. Funding for everything else, from food and cosmetics inspection to even chasing down advertisers that use the phrase 'FDA approved' illegally, is so hamstrung as to be useless. The only time the FDA gets involved is when there's press coverage on people getting sick and/or dying. Only a very, very small fraction of meat is ever inspected... and there are holes in the system so big you could fly a 737 through it and still have ample room to fit at least a dozen Rush Limbaughs lengthwise through them. Take honey, for example: Honey is mixed and remixed with many other suppliers, such that the expiration date is never known. Should a particular batch of honey be close to expiring or would otherwise fail inspection, it is shipped across the border, mixed in with good honey, and then imported back. This is legal. There's so many examples of this it's not even funny.
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm no fan of the FDA either but this isn't your strongest example.
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Bottled water and/or meat are probably stronger examples here than honey.
If only because Penn & Teller did Bullshit episodes on the topics that slashdotters will be familiar with...
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Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm aware that this fact is repeated often on the internet but nobody's ever been able to provide a citation that doesn't cite another, that cites another, that leads on in a circle forever. Regardless, such practices are unregulated and there is no tracking or auditing, so if something that wasn't honey made it into production, or if it contained botulism (yes, honey can indeed become infected with pathogens, le gasp)... there would be no way to trace it back to its source. That was my point. If the Egypti
Re:FDA review means little (Score:5, Informative)
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm aware that this fact is repeated often on the internet but nobody's ever been able to provide a citation that doesn't cite another, that cites another, that leads on in a circle forever. Regardless, such practices are unregulated and there is no tracking or auditing, so if something that wasn't honey made it into production, or if it contained botulism (yes, honey can indeed become infected with pathogens, le gasp)... there would be no way to trace it back to its source. That was my point. If the Egyptians happened to be really good at preserving things, you know, like people and honey, well all the more power to them. However, this is not Egypt during the time of the Parohs.
The statements of the obvious ("this isn't ancient Egypt" etc.) reveal a slight impatient hostility on your part. It's not my fault you chose a weak example.
The principle here is that honey has such a high concentration of varous sugars and such a low concentration of water relative to those, that it provides an environment quite hostile for microbes. Osmosis across their cell membranes would tend to dehydrate them. It's similar to what happens when food (or whatever) is packed in salt. For this reason honey was once used to dress wounds in order to help prevent infection.
Knowing something about its nature is an alternative to dealing with any circular citations you might encounter. At least if your sole concern is whether you are likely to be harmed by eating "expired" honey. I for one am not worried about this at all, but as I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or other such practitioner I'm not telling anyone else what they should do. I simply consider it more than coincidence that such a widespread practice of selling expired honey (assuming I accept that at face value) hasn't resulted in reported cases of food poisoning like we saw with tainted spinach, cantaloupe, et al in recent years.
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Honey can preserve botulism [wikipedia.org] producing spores. It typically only affects infants and is pretty rare (perhaps 100 cases in the US per year). Just goes to show that nature abhors a vacuum.
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Im pretty sure that honey would crystalize before it would "expire". Theres not enough moisture in it for things to grow in, so bacteria and fungus tend to have a hard time with it.
Ive had year+ old honey that was generally fine, if tasting a bit wierd because it had started to crystalize and become more concentrated.
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Heck, when we were cleaning out my grandparents house we found a jar of honey that had to be at least 30-40 years old (pre-zipcode in address and no barcode, but a "recognizable" brand name).
We cracked it open and enjoyed it with some similar vintage alcohols (also found during the cleaning), on some (newly bought) crackers, as part of our "good-bye meal" after we finished emptying everything else.
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Honey doesn't expire or go bad, so I don't know what you are going on about there. The only thing that can happen to honey is if it is exposed to air it can solidify, but you can always just re-heat it and use it again.
Re:FDA review means little (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation needed.
Every civilization that has had access to bees since before there was writing?
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http://frugalliving.about.com/od/foodsavings/f/Honey.htm [about.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Preservation [wikipedia.org]
http://www.stilltasty.com/questions/index/128 [stilltasty.com]
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/04/15/why-doesn%E2%80%99t-honey-go-bad/ [howstuffworks.com]
Any other questions?
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http://www.honey.com/nhb/about-honey/frequently-asked-questions/category/honey-properties/ [honey.com]
Does honey have an expiration date?
Honey stored in sealed containers can remain stable for decades and even centuries! However, honey is susceptible to physical and chemical changes during storage; it tends to darken and lose its aroma and flavor or crystallize. These are temperature-dependent processes, making the shelf life of honey difficult to define. For practical purposes, a shelf life of two years is often stated. Properly processed, packaged and stored honey retains its quality for a long time. If in doubt, throw it out, and purchase a new jar of honey!
So, basically: "expiration" means that it's all crystallized. You can usually fix that by heating it, but it does not appear that it goes "bad" in the same way that most other food would. If it weren't an archaeological treasure, I'd totally be down to try some 3000 year old honey.
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You know what's funny, all those bullshit products say things like "proven by science" while the real stuff doesn't. So "proven by science" is a phrase that should now cause alarm bells to go off in your head.
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It's pretty hard to prove something isn't harmful to people. Even if a person seems fine, the product might be increasing risk of cancer, heart disease or something similar. It might take decades to notice the effects, and most studies don't last that long.
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Or take the more recent example of Walnuts where the actual verified health benefits are illegal to be represented in packaging and marketing material because that makes them a "drug"
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/8294-walnuts-are-drugs-says-fda [thenewamerican.com]
It is also why you can't actually get natural Red Rice Yeast in any form unless it has been deneutered of any helpful benefits because it competes with STATIN cholesterol drugs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_yeast_rice#Regulatory_restrictions [wikipedia.org]
The F
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The "red yeast rice" has a number of published cases where serious health damage (liver, kidneys) occurred. That's not a good case if you want to highlight the "evil intentions" of the FDA. Especially as the content of the red yeast rice you can buy in supplement form is suspected to contain quite unnatural ingredients.
The walnuts are plain silly though and more of a knee-jerk reflex with respect to making "medical claims".
not inhaled (Score:4, Informative)
Re:not inhaled (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed, if it looks like an inhaler and works like an inhaler... users are going to inhale...
Not that I have anything against people inhaling anything they want, but lets be realistic here.
.NET (Score:3, Insightful)
Most dangerous object in the office (Score:2)
(Yes, I'm aware that an inhalant powder is technically solid; don't get pendantic).
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don't get pendantic
*twitch*
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don't get pendantic
*twitch*
"Click"
I just turned Illogicalstudent's spell checker back on. You should feel better in a few moments.
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Seriously, the first three pages of "Morning Thunder caffeine FDA" turn up no useful results in Google.
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There's still a "Caffeine Meter" on their website:
http://www.celestialseasonings.com/products/herbal-teas/morning-thunder [celestialseasonings.com]
I don't see any source for your claim, though. All I found was a couple of people on usenet saying that Morning Thunder is different than they remember, and that they thought it used to have more caffeine. I can't find anything that definitively states that Morning Thunder's formulation was changed, much less that the FDA mandated such a change.
How dare they!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Just because it is legal elsewhere it doesn't mean it is safe for public consumption.
When the FDA lets a dangerous food and drug go free, they will get people yelling at them for not doing their job.
If the FDA bans a food or drug that isn't as dangerous, it is the strong arm of the mighty big brother keeping us poor folk who use this stuff as a cheap replacement for a 50' Boat, and 3 Vacation homes, from having any joy in our lives at all.
I've heard of... (Score:2)
Inhaling your food, but this is ridiculous! Garcon, I'd to huff a nice Columbian Supremo, please!
why so small in scope? (Score:4, Funny)
It seems the natural outcome of this would be giant fire-extinguisher sized containers in each corner of the building regularly spritzing caffeine into the air to generally improve employee output. You could even hide the canister behind ceiling tiles. Just another service provided by your company.
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But why hide it? It was listed in the benefits package.
Because people like me would steal it and stuff it in their desks. ZZZZZOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!!!!
Inhaling powder? (Score:2)
Inhaling powder? Rarely a good idea- common sense says it can't be good for the lungs.
Also, I think many people over-estimate how much caffeine really does for them. There have been studies that show that people get more of a "caffeine high" if they are given a decaf and told it has caffeine in it- than they are if they are given a caffinated coffee and told it is decaf.
Sure, caffeine does help- and does things to the brain; but 50% of the effect of caffeine is pure placebo effect.
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You mean the pollen that give many people allergic reactions and have people flowing rivers of phlegm out their nose? Yeah, hadn't forgotten that.
Bonghits for Breakfast! (Score:2)
What's next, snorting No-Doz?
more legal bribery (Score:2)
"...and paid them enough money to brand it as a dietary supplement."
FTFY
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There FTFY.
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I tried one of these (Score:2)
Re:We're all going to be thinner (Score:5, Insightful)
Caffeine pills. nodoz and friends. I used them to wean myself off caffeinated energy drinks without a headache. Its been awhile but I used a spreadsheet and I distinctly remember how much of a PITA it was to chop nodoz smaller than 1/4 size so I went for 1/2 pill intervals. I recall the process took a couple days.
Psychological addiction was unaffected of course. Sit at computer, sip energy drink, right?
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Psychological addiction was unaffected of course. Sit at computer, sip energy drink, right?
FWIW I've been working on a serious diet-soda addiction. As in diet soda was my primary source of fluids every day of the week.
I bought a "Primo Flavorstation" from Loews - it lets you carbonate tap water. They want you to buy syrups as a make-your-own-soda thing. But I've found that simply carbonated water does it for me about 90% of the time (and all of the syrups I've tried taste like shit).
There is another brand out there - Sodastream. But sodastream sucks because they booby-trap their co2 tanks to
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Psychological addiction was unaffected of course. Sit at computer, sip energy drink, right?
FWIW I've been working on a serious diet-soda addiction. As in diet soda was my primary source of fluids every day of the week.
I bought a "Primo Flavorstation" from Loews - it lets you carbonate tap water. They want you to buy syrups as a make-your-own-soda thing. But I've found that simply carbonated water does it for me about 90% of the time (and all of the syrups I've tried taste like shit).
There is another brand out there - Sodastream. But sodastream sucks because they booby-trap their co2 tanks to force you to buy refils from them at ~$25 a tank (and their new units have half-size tanks too). The Primo takes standard paintball tanks, so you can refill the cansister for about $3 at almost any sports store (I use the sports authority that is just down the block from me). Primo also wants to sell you $25 refills, but they don't try to force you - only give you BS about "food grade" co2, which is no different from any other kind of non-medical co2.
I have a Sodastream. The refills are actually more like $15 (still quite a bit higher than $3, but I didn't even know that Primo Flavorstation existed when I bought it). I'm sure the syrups for Sodastream are compatible with your machine, and some of them aren't terrible. The Cola one is pretty good (and it uses real sugar!). Stay away from the Red Bull one though, it truly is nasty.
As far as food-grade CO2 goes. BS it may well be, but I once worked for a company that used bulk CO2 as a key ingredient f
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Lots of restraunts get their soda carbonation tanks refilled from the same places the guys who refill paintball tanks get their large tanks filled. Same thing with the guys who homebrew beer. From the reading I did, the only difference in grades of co2 has to do with the container - medical grade requires a certain kind of lining on all the tanks and hoses. Otherwise nada.
You can buy an adapter for your sodastream to use a regular paintball tank or even a larger 5 to 20 lb co2 tank. Check out co2doctor
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I usually avoid starbucks because I think their coffee is awfully bitter, but tried a "triple tall americano" once. The barista convinced me that espresso wasn't at all bitter like "normally" brewed coffee. She was right, and americano is now probably my favourite coffee to drink, although I don't often get that extra shot.
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Just how bad can it be to drink a nice coffee?
Sounds like an improvement. If you drink a nice cup of coffee you seen need to pee a cup of coffee... This eliminates half of that inconvenience...
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Caffeine is still a diuretic.
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To answer your question, right after some tween snorts about 30 of these things on a dare and his heart explodes at the dinner table.
I have mixed feelings about this product, I feel bad that people keep coming up with new ways to get each other addicted for profit. The upside is that this will almost certainly help flush out some of the shallow end of the gene pool. The problem of course is collateral damage. The downside is that I'll have to share the road with the already impatient, attention deficit type
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That's kind of a useless metric, isn't it? Ideally ALL of the products that succeed in challenging the FDA should never have issues. Now, what about all the products that FAILED at challenging the FDA, or never even bothered to challenge?