The Importance of Careful Label Reading

The Spartan · Post by **The Spartan** » 2007-10-12 02:36pm

A little background: I tend to avoid caffeinated drinks. I don't like coffee and I try not to drink soda because of weight issues; even diet soda because I don't want to tempt myself. As a result I don't consume much caffeine.

Well, I also drink Crystal Light in the form of On-the-Go packs in my water at work. Today I was drinking "Wild Strawberry" and around noon I started feeling jittery and I wasn't sure what the problem was. I remembered that that particular flavor was one of their "energy" variants with caffeine but I thought, "It's not that much in there. Right?"

Wrong. There is 60mg per serving. Two servings per packet. I drank two packets over the course of about 3 hours.

That's 240 mg of caffeine into someone who rarely consumes more than about 60mg on any given day.

Anyone else have similar such, let's say, adventures?

Master of Cards · Post by **Master of Cards** » 2007-10-12 02:52pm

11 cans of ode Red in about 2 hours. Thats a sugar crash to tell about.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2007-10-12 03:06pm

Land O' Lakes sweetened vanilla Half and Half in last year's Thanksgiving day mashed potatoes...I didn't do the shopping, and just opened and poured, and was at first a little horrified at the thickness and color, then I smelled the vanilla.
The containers look a lot alike...

Ever peel 15 pounds of potatoes by hand (no vegetable peeler, with a knife, bitches!), cook them, drain them, and then utterly ruin them?

Far and away my biggest disaster in any kitchen, ever.
I have a hatred of wasting food that borders on the irrational, my face still burns with shame over that one.

Gaidin · Post by **Gaidin** » 2007-10-12 03:16pm

I once took a caffeine pill with red bull on a night i had to stay up to work. It was...interesting.

Though honestly, my most fun experience was an observational one. One of my friends had such a high caffeine intake and one day he decided to go cold turkey. He did it to. For about three days he was shakey, couldn't concentrate if you held a gun to his head, and altogether a useless paperweight.

Metatwaddle · Post by **Metatwaddle** » 2007-10-12 03:42pm

Gaidin wrote:I once took a caffeine pill with red bull on a night i had to stay up to work. It was...interesting.

You haven't seen anything until you combine Adderall with caffeine. I want to shoot myself whenever I take any sort of Ritalin-family meds anyway. Mixing them with caffeine is fucking torture.

Post by **Dalton** » 2007-10-12 04:04pm

Worst I've done is grabbed a Vanilla Coke instead of the classic kind. I was quite surprised when I tasted cream soda and ass.

Lindar · Post by **Lindar** » 2007-10-12 04:05pm

i can rarely drink coffee...

i once ate a whole can of coffee cookies...and i think that was the closest thing to a hang over i've ever had....oye... just thinking about it makes my head hurt

Santiago · Post by **Santiago** » 2007-10-12 04:30pm

I drink Red Bull and ocassionaly a Coca Cola or Pepsi. Hot coffee is good on a cold day to warm up. If I'm not in the mood for too much caffeine, iced tea is good (green or black is good)

Soontir C'boath · Post by **Soontir C'boath** » 2007-10-12 04:36pm

I recently bought a can of nuts which turned out to be spicy flavored. I gave it to my roommate and his friends to munch on.

I'm sure there were many other instances...

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-10-12 05:19pm

Only thing that comes to mind is accidentally grabbing diet (*insert retching noises here*) soda instead of regular for me.

Mordicant · Post by **Mordicant** » 2007-10-12 05:44pm

When the drive-thru workers give you Mr. Pibb, when you ask for Dr. Pepper. To a Dr. Pepper elitist like myself that is worse than Diet. But, I fail for not fully reading the menu, they fail for not warning me.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2007-10-12 05:51pm

Bizarro liquor adventures...but most of the time just grabbing the wrong glass.

Sometimes better then what I have, most of the time some godawful fru-fru drink from hell.

rhoenix · Post by **rhoenix** » 2007-10-12 05:52pm

Adding cayenne pepper powder to rooibos tea. In trying to make a more cleansing sort of drink, I inadvertently created evil.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2007-10-12 06:32pm

Frank Hipper wrote:
I have a hatred of wasting food that borders on the irrational, my face still burns with shame over that one.

I'm with you. I don't find many uses for the word "sin," but wasting food on a planet where so many people are starving comes as close as anything, for me.

I swore off caffeine a year or so ago, and now one cup of strong regular coffee is enough to give me a quarter-day's worth of the sweaty jitters.

Darth Holbytlan · Post by **Darth Holbytlan** » 2007-10-12 07:42pm

I've done the soda diet instead of regular one once. The first sip was a real shock. It was a whole case of root beer, too.

The only other mistakes I remember were using nutmeg instead of cinnamon on cinnamon toast and using pancake mix to flour chicken. That'll teach me to not label my flour containers. It was only the second time I made it that I figured out why it came out so sweet.

I usually eat my mistakes unless they come out truly horrible. It says something that I gave the soda away.

J · Post by J » 2007-10-12 07:55pm

I once bought low fat ice cream by accident.
Low fat ice cream isn't ice cream.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2007-10-12 10:06pm

I had an "organic" cider today at a beer festival. It tasted like bacon fried in piss. WHY OH WHY didn't I keep up my hatred of organic false economy?

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2007-10-12 10:34pm

A certain someone who will remain nameless had an entire pack of Jolt gum in roughly 2 hours, not realizing that every two pieces was equal to a cup of coffee.

phred · Post by **phred** » 2007-10-13 03:53am

Ive done the accidental Diet thing a couple times. It is one of the more horrific things that can happen under normal circumstances.

A friend and I once split a 12 pack of Jolt cola during a 2 hour movie. I was fairly ok, but my friend was bouncing around the room for the rest of the afternoon.

Raxmei · Post by **Raxmei** » 2007-10-13 11:46am

Bought some bottled drink stuff, I believe it was Sobe, not realizing it contained taurine and fuck knows what else. I react poorly to stimulants.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2007-10-13 12:26pm

Regular doses of Adderall, combined with something like four *HUGE* mugs of dark, black, home made Dominican coffee. I love the taste, which is why I don't stop...

...but then comes six hours of a pounding heart, combined with the paradoxical sedation/soothing. The worst part is, I never learn my lesson

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2007-10-13 12:30pm

Pseudoephedrine (instead of diphenhydramine) downed with a 40oz Smirnoff for a runny nose back in 2k3. I did NOT like the huge high it got me one bit!

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2007-10-13 12:39pm

Zuul wrote:I had an "organic" cider today at a beer festival. It tasted like bacon fried in piss. WHY OH WHY didn't I keep up my hatred of organic false economy?

Why would you drink anything but beer, at a beer festival...?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2007-10-13 01:00pm

Kanastrous wrote:
Zuul wrote:I had an "organic" cider today at a beer festival. It tasted like bacon fried in piss. WHY OH WHY didn't I keep up my hatred of organic false economy?
Why would you drink anything but beer, at a beer festival...?

Beer tastes like shit and they had a load of ciders, perries and spirits too. Though there was a lot more beers, ales and stouts, I hate beer in general so I didn't have any. Ciders don't usually taste like shit. That organic one did, though. I think it was called "Drunkerton's" or something. Vile, awful bacon-piss.

Raw Shark · Post by **Raw Shark** » 2007-10-13 05:13pm

Kanastrous wrote:Why would you drink anything but beer, at a beer festival...?

Because it's there and you paid the cover? I try to maintain a theme when I go to the one downtown here, and if they had enough different ciders I'd totally have at it.

The Spartan wrote:Anyone else have similar such, let's say, adventures?

A couple weeks ago, I somehow managed to buy a sixpack of beer without noticing that it was passion fruit flavor until I tasted it.