Energy Drinks

You'd think that Starbucks, Dippin' Dots and 7-Eleven would approach a heat wave with dollar signs in mind. Instead, all three chains are offering cool freebies this week, starting with Free Slurpee Day Wednesday. To celebrate its 85th birthday, 7-Eleven is giving away Slurpees from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The chain in May began making the slushy bearers of brain freeze more diet-friendly by slicing out the sugar and halving the calorie count. PHOTOS: Fast food gets outrageous In Inglewood, Randy's Donuts is gifting customers with free doughnuts from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday to celebrate its 60th anniversary.

Energy drinks are the target of many complaints: too much sugar, too much caffeine and too many herbal extracts with dubious claims. Now, researchers say the drinks may lead to drug abuse. In a paper published online last month in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine in Baltimore and his coauthors highlighted the risks of consuming too much caffeine via energy drinks, including caffeine toxicity and dependence.

For parents, the costs of youth sports can add up. There are fees for leagues and competitions, plus expenses for equipment, training and uniforms. How can you keep the spending under control? Mark Hyman, the author of "The Most Expensive Game in Town," has some advice: • Start an equipment exchange. Hyman has used this himself in youth leagues. "Families bring us their used, outgrown, no-longer-needed baseball pants, lacrosse sticks, soccer shoes, etcetera," he explained. "We then make them available to others at no charge.

Energy beverages can have 10 times the caffeine of soft drinks, or even more, prompting scientists at Johns Hopkins University to recommend that product labels list the content and warn about health risks. Energy drinks are sold as dietary supplements, and the Food and Drug Administration doesn't limit their caffeine content or require warnings. A typical 12-ounce soft drink contains about 35 milligrams of caffeine, while some energy drinks have as much as 500 milligrams, said the researchers in the journal Drugs and Alcohol Dependence.

The federal food assistance program SNAP pays $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion for purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages every year, a new study has found. Meanwhile, the government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that we cut back on consumption of sugary drinks. A disconnect? The authors seem to think so. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are important, they stress, but "allowing annual use of multibillions of SNAP benefits to purchase products that are at the core of public health concerns about obesity and chronic illnesses appears misaligned with the goals of helping low-income families live active, healthy lives.” They suggest that reauthorization of the SNAP program, set for later this year, "could be a good time to reconsider the program priorities to align use of public funds with fostering public health.

Selvin Chajon Rodriguez asked the mother of his young children to marry him. But if she said no, the couple and their son and daughter would "all be laid to rest. " The alleged threats, detailed in court papers filed last week in Riverside County Superior Court, were enough for Laura Reveriano to request a restraining against her ex-boyfriend. "Selvin called and told me he would follow me to the end of the earth and he would kill the kids if they are not with him and there would be nowhere I could hide," Reveriano wrote in the request for a domestic violence restraining order filed Aug. 27. But the temporary restraining order she was granted the next day did little good.

Caffeinated alcohol drinks like Four Loko and Joose are being whisked off store shelves faster than college kids can stock up. The fallout from the Food and Drug Administration's safety warning Wednesday on what amounts to a ban on such beverages remains to be seen. "I'm afraid that horse is already out of the barn," columnist Nicole Brochu writes in the Sun Sentinel in Florida . "And in fact, some drinkers, taking a cue from a trend that started in European bars, were already mixing their own alcoholic energy drinks when fashionable labels like Four Loko, Joose and Max hit the scene.

Monster Beverage Corp., facing scrutiny over the effects of its energy drinks, reported a lower-than-expected third-quarter profit of $86.1 million, sending its shares down as much as 12% in after-hours trading. Executives at the Corona company, which controls 35% of the energy-drink market, attributed the lower profit to increased sales efforts in Asia and higher cost of promotional offers. Monster's profit of $86.1 million, or 47 cents a share, was 4% higher than earnings of $82.4 million, or 44 cents a share, in last year's third quarter.

As of late September chef Bejamin Bailly has no longer helmed the kitchen at Dana Hollister's Silver Lake restaurant, Cliff's Edge. A little under a year after Bailly overhauled the restaurant's menu in a move that generated significant buzz , Bailly has been replaced by former Public Kitchen & Bar chef Vartan Abgaryan. No reason has been given for Bailly's departure, but Hollister and team welcome Abgaryan and his new menu featuring local, seasonal seafood, meats and veggies.

Cocaine is a drug, federal health officials say. So what's the news? This Cocaine is an energy drink produced by a Las Vegas company. It contains no actual cocaine but is being marketed as "The Legal Alternative" to the illegal drug, according to its website. Its logo appears to be spelled out in a white powder that resembles the drug.