Selling Young on 'Gaming Fuel'

Two popular video gamers in black T-shirts posed as snipers wielding real semi-automatic guns at an outdoor range, blasting orbs of fruit and cups of deep orange liquid in ultraslow motion. "Introducing Blood Orange," announced a video of the spectacle.

In the days afterward, online followers from hardcore gamers to middle-schoolers on Xboxes ordered tubs of the stuff, the latest flavor of a powdered energy drink called G Fuel that is marketed as a secret sauce to enhance focus and endurance for virtual battles.

"Oh, this is gonna taste so good!" exclaimed one cherub-faced YouTuber, Michael, his unmade bunk bed in the background.

G Fuel and a competitor called GungHo are a new incarnation of energy drink, growing in popularity while the energy drink industry as a whole has been under scrutiny because of deaths and hospitalizations linked to consumption of caffeine- and sugar-laden beverages.

Traditional energy drink makers have also been playing to the growing gamer culture in some labels - Mountain Dew Game Fuel (with extra doses of caffeine) and Nintendo Power Up Energy Drink. The Facebook page for Monster Energy Gaming declares: "Next time you are looking for some gaming fuel, grab a Monster Energy and Unleash the Beast on some noobs!"

The industry is tapping into the rock-star allure and young online fan base of "professional e-athletes," analysts say, with sponsorships of gaming competitions and players. Gamma Labs, the company selling G Fuel, heavily promotes a Call of Duty clan including those would-be snipers in the video ad.

While major energy drink makers - including Red Bull, Rockstar and Monster - voluntarily agreed to stop marketing to children under 12 because of the adverse health effects publicly associated with them, a congressional report released this year excoriated those companies and others for continuing to target teenagers, whose brains and bodies are not yet fully developed.

The newer gamer drinks are sugar-free and vitamin-infused, but they often contain levels of caffeine that rival or exceed those of some other well-known products, according to Caffeine Informer, a website that provides scientific and consumer information on caffeine levels in food and drink.

One maker promises a drink to enhance "brain energy," while another calls it his "natural Adderall."

Dr. Marcie Schneider, an adolescent-medicine specialist in Greenwich, Connecticut, worries that most parents do not recognize the dangers of the drinks.

"I feel like we have a better sense of how many kids are smoking pot than how many kids are using energy drinks," Schneider said. She was one of two lead authors of a study for the American Academy of Pediatrics that recommended that children and adolescents should never consume energy drinks because of caffeine's potential to disturb sleeping patterns, increase heart rates and slow brain development.

But business is still booming. Sales of energy drinks and shots in the United States are projected to rise to $21 billion by 2017 from $12.5 billion in 2012, according to Packaged Facts, a publisher of market research in the food and beverage industry.

In Melbourne, Australia, Finlay Sturzaker spent 100 Australian dollars to order several tubs of a powdered G Fuel drink, only to have his father confiscate it, he said. Finlay, 14, said he found out about the drink on YouTube through the FaZe Call of Duty clan in the commercials. They're his favorite YouTubers, he said.

"It makes me more focused while playing 'Call of Duty' and I definitely see improvement, and it gives me very natural energy," he said.

His parents didn't care, he said, until he started drinking the product every day.

The makers of the new drinks say they are natural, without chemicals. People who drink them say they don't cause jitters or crashes like other energy drinks.

"I don't think you can even compare the ingredients that are in G Fuel to the ingredients of some energy drinks," said Clifford Morgan, the founder and chief executive of Gamma Labs, which makes the G Fuel drinks. "They're so toxic. They have so many chemicals."

But caffeine and other stimulants remain central ingredients. G Fuel's caffeine content, 150 milligrams per 12 fluid ounces, is higher than many of the Monster and Red Bull drinks, according to Caffeine Informer. GungHo does not disclose its caffeine content, according to Danny Mason, the company's chief executive.

While G Fuel and GungHo do not have the distribution of the big energy drinks, their products may soon become more widely available. Basic Research, the company that makes GungHo, is in talks with major drug store chains to bring the product to mass retailers' shelves, Mason said.

Morgan and Mason say their energy drinks are appropriate for teenagers and both let their children drink the products.

Researchers have documented a link between energy drinks and gaming. A 2014 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that boys who consumed energy drinks at least weekly spent approximately four more hours a week playing video games than boys who consumed energy drinks less often than once a week.

At the same time, the gamer culture is spreading more deeply into teenage life. Last year a 14-year-old in Norway collapsed and fell into a coma after reportedly drinking four liters of energy drinks during a 16-hour "Call of Duty" party at his school.

Jonas Feliciano, a senior beverages analyst for Euromonitor International, said targeting the video game culture made sense for an industry trying to maintain a rapid pace of growth potential in the non-sports market.

"This is the space that's growing," he said, citing video streaming services like Twitch that show hours of professional gamers playing, drinks by their side. "This is a marketing opportunity."

The Food and Drug Administration has asked energy drink makers for more data on caffeine. When questioned by The New York Times, the agency said it was also interested in other ingredients.

"Sales of caffeinated energy drinks have grown dramatically without adequate consideration of the cumulative intake of caffeine by teens and adolescents and, due to the law governing food additives, without any premarket review by FDA," said Michael Taylor, the Food and Drug Administration's deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine.

Caffeine is not the only concern, Schneider said. Other ingredients such as taurine and guarana, a plant extract, also act as stimulants, she said. Taurine, for example, which is in G Fuel, "works on the heart," she said. "It is an amino acid and works just like caffeine." As a result, she added, "you are getting all these other things that potentiate the caffeine."

The key ingredient in GungHo is 250 milligrams of a compound called citicoline (trademarked Cognizen), which the GungHo website says will keep "your brain alert and functioning like a Ninja."

Officials at the FDA are focusing primarily on caffeine. But a spokeswoman for the agency said, "We're interested in all active ingredients commonly found in energy drinks and how they work together."

Gamma's Call of Duty clan called FaZe has moved into a rent-free six-bedroom, three-story house on a quiet residential street in Plainview, New York. The company recently installed eight cameras throughout to live-stream their activities to fans around the clock.

Already their association with G Fuel is clear to many young fans who seek their help on Twitter to obtain G Fuel, or in assuring their parents that it is safe to drink. This one came earlier this month from "Matthew," who described himself as a 13-year-old Xbox addict: "@FaZe_Rain I'm a big fan, just wondering if you could send me some gfuel cus my parents won't let me get some. I watch all you vids. Reply??" (There was no reply.)

Ethan Yorke, a high school junior in Lancaster, California, said drinking G Fuel helped him improve his home run average significantly on an MLB baseball video game he plays (though he lamented that the drink was too expensive for him to consume regularly).

"It really feels like you have genuine energy, like you've just had a 30-minute-to-an-hour nap," he said. "And you just have pure energy."

© 2015 New York Times News Service