Hansard

I join members in thanking Graeme Dey for bringing an important issue to the chamber, and for the content of his speech. Issues that surround possible health risks for young people in Scotland are not to be taken lightly, so I am very encouraged by the cross-party agreement on this issue.

In the past few years, the volume of energy drinks being consumed in the UK has increased enormously. I have different statistics from Mairi Gougeon’s, but they tell the same story. The British Nutrition Foundation says that consumption has increased from 463 million litres in 2010 to a staggering 672 million litres in 2016, and that the figures continue to go the wrong way. The foundation also established that UK adolescents consume the highest amount of energy drinks of the 16 European Union countries that were surveyed, with teenagers drinking 3.1 litres a month compared with the EU average of 2 litres—a staggering 50 per cent more.

If Scottish young people were leading the way in consumption of any other product that had such adverse effects on their health, there would be public outcry and robust legislative change. What is it about energy drinks that means that we are so willing to ignore the hazards?

I praise the actions of retailers. Graeme Dey listed many of them, and in my constituency Waitrose, Morrisons, Asda and Aldi have all taken it upon themselves to ban the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. Welcome though that is, it should not necessarily be voluntary. The EU Food Information Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011) requires that drinks that contain caffeine at more than 150mg per litre state that they do on their label, and say

“High caffeine content. Not recommended for children ... or breast feeding women.”

Caffeine can have adverse effects on our mental health and on the behaviours of young people and others. Labelling is clear about the impact, but there is a case for going further, which I would be interested to explore.

The health risks of having too much caffeine for anyone at any age are widely known. We have had debates before about caffeinated alcohol creating “wired wide-awake drunks”; the mix of caffeine and alcohol is, to be frank, deadly. Why do we allow a child to walk into a shop and purchase a can of Monster, which comes in at a whopping 338.1mg per litre, or Red Bull, with its 319.8mg of caffeine per litre? That level of caffeine in a young and still developing body can have major neurological and cardiovascular side effects. Excessive caffeine consumption—which drinking just one energy drink can be classed as—can cause interrupted sleep, anxiety and behavioural changes. Speaking as a parent and a politician, those are not traits that any of us want to see in our young people as they are growing, learning and sitting exams that will have a huge impact on their futures.

It is vital that drinks that have had caffeine added to them for a physiological side effect be regulated in respect of who can buy them and how much caffeine is allowed. There may be ways round regulations, so we need to turn our attention to that.

Mairi Gougeon pointed out that the same worries exist about the quantities of sugar in energy drinks. The combination of sugar, caffeine and artificial additives creates a cocktail of short and long-term health risks. The British Nutrition Foundation found that a 16-year-old who consumes just one can of energy drink in a day has already exceeded the daily recommended sugar intake. Let me illustrate. Just one can of the energy drink Rockstar has 20 teaspoons of sugar in it. We already have an epidemic of childhood obesity in the country, and it will only continue to rise. Drinking a can of Rockstar is the equivalent of sitting and eating three bars of chocolate in one go. We are complicit in the consumption of energy drinks.

In conclusion, I welcome the voluntary action by supermarkets and others, but I think that Government has a role in education and awareness-raising, in labelling, in setting age restrictions and in changing the recipes and limiting the amount of caffeine in the drinks.

In conclusion, I again thank Graeme Dey—I know that that was two conclusions, Presiding Officer—for raising awareness of this important issue in Parliament.