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Harry: From calorie count to portion sizes,
we wanted to find out all the differences
between Monster Energy in the UK and the US.
This is "Food Wars."
Officially speaking, classic Monster Energy
only comes in one portion size in the UK,
a 500-milliliter can.
I looked around for other sizes online,
and I thought I'd found some 440-milliliter cans,
but unfortunately the seller just sent me
a bunch more regular cans.
Only on "Food Wars" are we annoyed
when they send you more than you paid for.
Classic US Monster Energy comes in two sizes:
the standard 16-ounce cans
or the mega Monster Energy can, which is 24 ounces.
Good Lord.
That's 710 milliliters,
a 42% increase of the largest UK can.
This is too big.
This looks like the canister of ooze
that fell in the sewer and made the Ninja Turtles.
When you buy other Monster products in the UK, however,
some of them do come in different sizes to the classic can.
For example, an Espresso Monster can in the UK
is just 250 milliliters.
Certain Monster Ultra flavors come in a
553-milliliter mega can.
And if you get a bottle of Monster HydroSport,
it comes in a 650-milliliter bottle.
The type of Monster Energy you drink
also affects the can size in the US.
Java Monster cans come in 15 fluid ounces,
and the Rehab Monsters come in cans
of 15.5 fluid ounces.
16's too much. 15.5? Print it!
What about the largest multipack item by volume?
Well, in the UK, it's a 12-pack of Monster HydroSport,
which totals 9.75 liters of Monster.
That's quite a lot.
That pales in comparison to the US's largest multipack.
That's 24-pack
of 16-ounce cans.
It's a total of 11.365 liters of Monster
and a 16.5% increase of the UK multipack.
I didn't get it, but it is at Target,
so here's a video of me holding it up.
I thought I was taking a picture.
That's me realizing that, oops, it's on video.
Here are all the Monster Energy products you'll find
in the UK, including those that you won't find in the US.
Here are all the Monster Energy products in the US,
including a bunch you won't find in the UK.
Not only are we going to talk through all these,
but we're also going to taste them
and provide some thoughts.
Oh, I'm dead.
I'm dead!
Ugh. I mean, I barely survived
the Mountain Dew episode, so.
[laughs]
If you would've thought by now on "Food Wars"
I would've learned my lesson,
you would think wrong.
Let's start with just the classic Monster Energy drinks.
In the UK, we have two flavors
that you won't find in the US.
We could only get one of them today, and it's this one:
The Lewis Hamilton 44 Monster Energy.
Lewis Hamilton is a Formula 1 driver.
He's one of the best ones of all time.
He's got, I think, seven world championships,
and when he races, he wears his lucky number, which is 44.
So they partnered with Lewis to create this drink.
Let's give it a try.
It just smells like Red Bull, I'll be honest.
It's probably a good time now to say that
I don't actually drink energy drinks.
I barely even drink coffee. I'm very loyal to tea.
So this is gonna be fun.
Cheers.
It's just quite a standard energy-drink flavor.
But yeah, goes down pretty smooth.
I wonder if this would make me faster if I drank it.
The other exclusive UK Monster Energy flavor is VR/46,
which unfortunately I wasn't able to track down today.
The VR/46 can is designed
in collaboration with Valentino Rossi,
who's a very famous MotoGP driver.
I'm sad I couldn't get the can today,
because it gave me enormous "Mario Sunshine" vibes.
Also, I need to stop drinking this,
because I've got a lot more Monsters to try.
We have a few exclusive Monster Energy drinks in the US.
Got the Monster Energy low-carb.
Oh, I hate how that smells.
Like, I instantly have a headache.
This has to be the first time in history
someone has poured Monster Energy drink into a cup
and not drank it straight from the can, right?
Who's ever done this before?
It tastes like electricity.
Next up, we have the Monster Reserve watermelon
and the Reserve white pineapple.
Oh!
It tastes like sparkling juice, I guess.
There's this flavor of, like, static.
We got this one, this is the Monster Import super premium.
What is the -- it's 18.6 fluid ounces.
But look at the top on this one.
Do you understand how to open this?
Oh, here we go.
This to me is like,
maybe don't drink this all in one sitting.
"While in Europe at the Spanish MotoGP,
we saw a cool resealable can
and knew it'd be perfect for Monster.
The can company said, 'only available in Europe.'
We said, 'BS, we gotta have it!'"
Whoa, Monster with the attitude!
"If you can open and close the can with one hand,
you probably dated a lot when you were younger."
I mean, everyone who's drinking this is 12.
[grunts quietly]
How European.
The next category is Juiced Monster.
Well, in the UK, it's "Juiced,"
whereas in the US, it seems to just be "Juice."
We do share most of our flavors
with the US in this category,
but we do have one or two which are different.
We'll start over here, with Ripper.
When I first saw the can and the name,
I thought it was, like, based on Australia
because "you little ripper" is a kind of Australian saying,
but then I read the can, and it turns out
it's actually based on Hawaii and surf culture.
Sometimes you gotta just throw a shrimp on the barbie
and say "you little ripper."
Ooh. This one smells nice.
I've sipped, like, two of these,
and I have a headache already,
so this is going well.
Then we have one which seems to be a linguistic difference.
In the UK, you can find Juiced Monarch.
The can is adorned with loads of butterflies,
and monarch is, of course, a type of butterfly.
Whereas in the US, you guys have Papillon,
which is French for butterfly,
so I'm not really sure what they've gone for there.
Obviously the UK has a monarch, so maybe we've just gone
for the kind of royal theme on this one. Who knows?
Ooh, I actually like that one.
Oh, no, this is bad.
I can't like these.
I'm not ready for an energy-drink era.
Our Juice Monster drinks come in two exclusives.
The Juice Monster Papillon,
butterfly-themed, like UK Monarch.
I mean, I don't want to keep drinking this,
but if I had to, I wouldn't be as upset.
Aussie lemonade style.
It's like, I'm surprised these don't have alcohol in them,
because it smells like an alcoholic beverage.
Oof.
Actually, I do like this.
It's not bad. Because it tastes just like lemonade.
Like, I'm drinking it, it doesn't feel like I'm also, like,
getting energized to fight.
Next up, we have some coffee-and-Monster hybrid beverages.
In the UK on the website it shows us Espresso Monster,
and these include espresso and milk Monster,
vanilla Espresso Monster,
and salted caramel Espresso Monster.
However, if you click the buy-now link,
it takes you to a page where it doesn't actually
seem to contain any Espresso Monster,
so I'm not sure if they've been discontinued or not.
I was able to track down the espresso and milk Monster
on the internet.
To be fair, that just tastes like a coffee.
I don't get any kind of Monstery elements from that,
which I think is a good thing.
The pace at which I talk is just going to
increase and increase throughout this episode.
We have the coffee Monster in the US too.
However, over here we call it the Java Monster,
and there's so many flavors.
Got the Java Monster Mean Bean, the Loca Moca,
Kona blend, the Irish blend,
the low-cal vanilla light,
the salted caramel, the Swiss chocolate,
the cold brew latte, the cold brew sweet black,
the farmer's oats vegan coffee,
and the 300 triple-shot mocha
and 300 triple-shot French vanilla.
I, of course, got the 300 triple-shot ...
mocha, aha.
"300 milligrams of natural caffeine."
Oh, go to hell.
"Robust coffee plus cream."
Oh, there's cream in this?
Says "SHAKE IT UP."
So I'm shaking it.
[can fizzing]
Why did it have me shake it up?
Why did it have me shake it up?
If you're at work and you see
any one of your fellow employees walking in
in the morning drinking one of these,
like, it's time to find a new job,
'cause that guy is going to flip out.
Bad. Is there a napkin somewhere?
Next up, we've got Monster HydroSport.
Now, these are a range of noncarbonated energy drinks
which are kind of targeted at athletes,
similarly to a Powerade- or Gatorade-style beverage.
In the UK, they come in three flavors,
Charge, Striker, and Hang Time.
I've only got the Charge flavor today.
You can find the other ones on the internet,
but we're going to give this one a try.
It's got a really strong, slightly chemical smell to it.
But the taste actually isn't that bad.
In the UK, we drink a lot of squash,
which is kind of like a concentrated-juice thing
that then you dilute with water.
It just tastes like a kind of strong squash.
We're making a mess.
All right.
"Monster HydroSport. Energy water for advanced hydration."
OK. They have a bunch of these.
This is the Tropical Thunder.
OK. Oof. Oof!
That looks exactly like Gatorade.
Ugh!
Oh, this is bad.
Blech.
Purple Passion.
Mm!
This one's, like, really bad.
But the second it touched my lips,
I was like, I've made a mistake.
Other hydro flavors include super sport Killer Kiwi,
super sport Macho Mango, super sport Red Dawn,
super sport Blue Streak,
Blue Ice, watermelon,
and hydro zero sugar, aka hydro white.
We have a couple of Monster product ranges
you won't find in the UK,
starting with the Rehab Monsters.
These claim to help you, quote,
"refresh, recover, and revive," end quote,
after a "heavy night."
Yeah. Right.
The two that I was able to get my hands on
are strawberry lemonade and tea lemonade.
The lemonades.
Yeah, no.
Yep. Looks exactly like the first piss in the morning.
Maybe the worst one.
OK. So we have Rehab Monster watermelon.
You can also get a Rehab Monster peach tea,
an orangeade, and a raspberry tea.
I was actually able to track one of these down
on the UK Amazon website.
It seems to have been imported from somewhere in Europe.
I think maybe Italy.
Quite bad.
I'm at that age now where I'm always hungover.
What about you, Harry?
I'll be honest. If I'm hungover,
I'm going to go for a giant full English breakfast,
loads of salt-and-vinegar crisps,
and then about 2 liters of fizzy water
instead of one of these.
Then our final exclusive range is Muscle Monster.
These are exclusive shakes with 27 grams of protein
and 157 milligrams of caffeine.
You can get them in
vanilla Muscle Monster energy drink shake
and chocolate Muscle Monster energy shake.
I don't have them.
It's probably a good thing.
Now, we can't get Muscle Monster in the UK,
but I'm pretty sure I can just combine a standard Monster
with some protein powder
and it'll have the same effect, right?
Of many bad ideas that I've had on this show,
this might be the worst.
I'm going to go with 2 teaspoons of protein powder.
[laughs]
Charlie: That's the good stuff.
Harry: What on earth am I doing with my life?
It's just currently kind of formed a big layer.
There we go.
I hope you can see how badly this has gone.
This is not mixed at all.
Ah, dear God.
Oh, God.
I think the texture's more off-putting than the taste.
It's just like drinking a really grainy Monster Energy.
The things we do for gains! Am I right, guys?
Monster Energy products have some ingredients
that you might want to watch out for.
But there are also lessons to be learned
about ingredients which sound scary
but are actually completely fine.
Here's the ingredients list
as it appears on a can of classic Monster Energy drink.
I haven't even opened this yet.
Cheers, guys! I mean, it's classic Monster Energy.
Oh, it's poison.
Here's the ingredients list
as it appears on a can of classic Monster Energy in the UK.
Let's start with the good news.
If you take a look at the US list,
you might see some scary-sounding chemicals,
like pyridoxine hydrochloride or niacinamide,
which seemingly aren't present in the UK drink.
However, these are actually just full names
for vitamins B6 and B3, respectively.
Same goes for riboflavin and cyn --
cyanocobalamin in the US list,
which is just vitamin B2 and B12.
In fact, when you go through the list and edit a couple
of other linguistic differences, you'll see that the drinks
are actually identical in the two countries.
That's not the only thing we can demystify
about Monster, either.
Oh, God. I'm, like, seething from all this energy drink. Ah!
Yu may notice that Monster contains taurine.
For years, taurine has been the subject of
some inaccurate rumors on social media.
Inaccurate rumors on social media? Huh?
Taurine has been associated with bulls,
drawing its name from the Latin "taurus."
Some people ran with this and falsely claimed
that taurine is code for bull semen.
You have to be an absolute idiot
to think that taurine is bull semen. Period.
The name taurine comes from the fact
that it was actually first isolated from ox bile.
Even more good news is that there's no ox spit
in Monster energy either, as most food producers
will now use a synthetic version of taurine
that isn't derived from animals.
This also means that Monster is suitable for vegans.
OK. Enough defending Monster.
What about the more questionable ingredients?
Some of the flavors of Monster Energy drink
contain controversial food colors.
For instance, all these four bad boys have red 40 in them.
This is the visual representation
of children bouncing off the walls.
All these got the red 40 in it.
Let's do a power controversial-chemical taste test.
Bad.
Mm-mm.
Somehow worse.
I don't know what flowers taste like.
Definitely not that.
That's kind of nice, actually.
This other one that's sitting over here,
if you're wondering why it's over here --
sorry I'm talking, like, superfast all of a sudden.
This s--- is really kicking in.
So, this section, the US portion of this,
is completely disorganized. It's 100% my fault.
This, I just, what? I, what time is it?
These are food colorings derived from petroleum.
They've received a lot of attention in the past
due to concerns about their safety.
In 2007, a study from UK academics linked red 40,
yellow 5, and yellow 6 to hyperactivity
in children, possibly adults,
and yellow No. 5 to also being linked to causing cancer.
Gimme a dancing rat, sometime now. Thank you.
While these dyes aren't illegal in the UK,
most manufacturers will still avoid using them
because if they are added to food,
they must bear a warning label
which says that they "may have an adverse effect
on activity and attention in children."
However, as Monster Energy is kind of designed
to make you hyperactive,
it's one of the UK products which still uses one of them.
Our Pipeline Punch and Ultra Red Monster Energies
contain red 40, listed on the ingredients as E129,
which means that they also have to have
the hyperactivity warning.
The good news for the UK is that we stopped short
of using yellow 5 and yellow 6 in our Monster,
instead opting to use carotenes
to color our yellow drinks, like Mango Loco.
There was one other Monster-based controversy
that came out of the British Isles.
The Republic of Ireland pulled four varieties of Monster
from its shelves, including Juiced Ripper
and Lewis Hamilton 44, after they were found to contain
excessive levels of propylene glycol.
Propylene gly-sol --
no idea if that's how it's pronounced --
is a chemical which has GRAS, Generally Recognized as Safe,
status from the FDA.
It's mostly used in food as a humectant,
which is something which absorbs water
and provides additional nutritional value.
It has been the subject of some hysteria in the past.
It's one of the main ingredients of antifreeze,
as it can lower the freezing points of liquids.
However, this level of it
would never be found in food or drink.
Even the Food Safety Authority of Ireland
said that the products it recalled
were unlikely to cause any harmful effects.
Let's talk about caffeine for a second.
Regular Monster Energy in the UK contains
32 milligrams of caffeine per 100 milliliters,
which equates to 160 milligrams in a 500-milliliter can.
A regular can of Monster Energy in the US
also contains 160 milligrams of caffeine,
with a slightly higher figure per milliliter
than the UK, as our cans are slightly smaller.
That's roughly equivalent to two shots of espresso,
which usually contain around 80 milligrams
of caffeine per shot.
If we're talking per milliliter,
the UK's most caffeinated Monster
would be the Espresso Monster, which contains
around 60 milligrams of caffeine per 100 milliliters,
almost double the amount of the normal can.
However, the UK espresso cans are only 250 milliliters.
That means that a whole can of that contains less caffeine
than a whole can of the classic version.
The most caffeinated US Monster drink
is the Monster Java 300 line, which, as the name suggests,
contains 300 milligrams of caffeine per 15 fluid ounces.
Good God.
At what point does caffeine intake become a problem?
The FDA says that 400 milligrams per day is generally
not associated with dangerous negative effects.
But if you consume 1,200 milligrams
in a relatively short amount of time,
that's when the toxic effects
like seizures can start to be observed.
According to the FDA, the life-threatening dose
of caffeine is 10 grams of caffeine.
It's surprisingly easy to get ahold of pure caffeine online.
Without any age verification,
I was able to pay £23 for 100 grams of this,
which is theoretically enough to kill 10 people.
We're going to weigh out a 10-gram lethal dosage
just to show you how little that actually is.
So that is roughly what's in there.
That right there is more than enough caffeine
to kill a normal human being.
That was about 4 teaspoons' worth.
What's this like in terms of Monster Energies?
Well, in the UK, you'd need to drink 7.5 of them
to hit the 1,200-milligram mark,
but you'd need to drink 62.5 of them
to hit the 10-gram mark.
This means you'd be unlikely to die
just from the caffeine on its own,
but it's not unrealistic that you may experience
some negative side effects if you consume a lot of it.
It's a little more risky here in the US.
Just four of these Java 300 cans
can put you at risk of seizures,
although it'd probably take 33.3 of them to kill you.
Yeah. And you wouldn't die from caffeine.
You'd die from, like, your bladder exploding
from having 33 of these.
How many fluid ounces is that?
What's 15 times 33?
It's worth mentioning that in some stores across the UK,
they will ask for proof of age
in order to let you buy Monster Energy.
I got ID'd in a co-op trying to buy some of the drinks
for this video. There's no legal restriction
on the sale of energy drinks in the UK,
and they can technically be sold to anyone,
but some retailers will voluntarily cap them
to people over the age of 16.
This is a fantastic idea.
I'm not kidding. We should be doing that.
The age restriction is, no one over 25 drinks this crap.
You stop drinking this when you get, like,
I don't know, responsibilities.
There's also a large amount of sugar in Monster Energy.
In the UK, a 500-milliliter can contains 55 grams of sugar.
That's 110% of your daily allowance.
A 16-ounce can in the US
contains 54 grams of sugar,
which is 108% your daily allowance.
Now remember, though, the US cans contains
around 30 milliliters less than the UK can,
so proportionately speaking, they're basically the same.
My, uh, my spit-and-pour glass that I was using.
Special Avella blend.
It's actually not that bad.
Do you guys wanna try it?