Please excuse the following; we’re a little wired this morning.

Humans have never been “morning people”.  Ever since we crawled out of caves, we’ve been looking for a better way to wake up.  Seven thousand years ago, a Chinese emperor realized that if you dunk tea leaves in hot water, the resulting brew kick-starts your day.  It became the world’s first pick-me-up and quickly conquered the known world.  China went on to become the world’s pre-eminent tea grower, and now produces almost a million metric tons per year.  Those potent leaves are worth one and a half billion dollars.

Next came coffee, heathen punk.  It was discovered in Ethiopia in 600 AD, just as Islam was launched.  The plants didn’t grow well in Europe, so the Christians demonized coffee for a thousand years.  But, as soon as the Spaniards realized they could grow coffee in the New World, Pope Clement VIII blessed the stuff.  Suddenly, coffee was hot.  It soon overtook tea as our jolt of choice.  Today, Brazil holds the title of “The Caffeineator” thanks to its yearly output of six billion beans worth of beans.

But we were still yawning.  In 1962, a Thai businessman developed a drink called “Krating Daeng,” which was co-opted in 1984 by an Austrian named Dietrich Mateschitz, who translated the name into “Red Bull”.  Loaded with taurine, an amino acid found in ox bile – as well as buckets of sugar, a week’s worth of B vitamins, carbohydrates and caffeine – Red Bull is a real eye opener.  Even the packaging is hyperbolic, claiming that Red Bull “improves performance, increases concentration and reaction speed, increases endurance and stimulates metabolism.”  It must be true, because millions of adolescents are slurping the stuff by the gallon.  Red Bull sales will easily top $1B this year.

Now the only people still sleeping are the US Food and Drug Administration.  Outside America, selling bovine stomach acid to minors seems suspicious.  Red Bull is being investigated by the Swedish National Food Administration after being linked to the death of three consumers.  Red Bull marketing is restricted in Denmark, Norway, France and Iceland.  The Brits won’t sell it anyone under 16, and the Finns will sell you only one can per day.

We were intrigued.  We were tired.  We swigged a can an hour ago.  Would we have another?  Not for all the tea in China.