21-Year-Old Dies After Drinking Panera's 'Charged Lemonade'

A 21-year-old University of Pennsylvania student drank a "Charged Lemonade" from Panera and was dead within hours. Her family is now suing the fast-casual restaurant chain, claiming the highly caffeinated energy drink contributed to her death in September 2022, CNN reports. Sarah Katz was diagnosed with long QT syndrome, a heart condition that can cause life-threatening fast or irregular heartbeats, when she was 5, and because of that, she was extremely careful about her caffeine intake, according to the wrongful death lawsuit and Katz's friends. The lawsuit accuses Panera of failing to properly label its "Charged Lemonade" to make it clear they are energy drinks—and not just any energy drinks, but drinks whose caffeine content is more than a standard can of Red Bull and a standard can of Monster energy drink combined, NBC News reports.

Panera's marketing describes "Charged Lemonade" as a "plant-based and clean" drink that contains as much caffeine as the chain's dark roast coffee, but at 390 milligrams in a large-size beverage, the lemonades actually can contain more caffeine than any size of Panera's dark roast coffee, plus another stimulant (guarana) and the equivalent of almost 30 teaspoons of sugar. "I think everyone thinks lemonade is safe. And really, this isn't lemonade at all. It's an energy drink that has lemon flavor," says a lawyer. "It should have an adequate warning." Hours after consuming the drink, Katz collapsed while out with friends; she went into cardiac arrest twice, the second time fatally. While the medical examiner's report does not cite the caffeine as a contributing factor in her death, a friend says Katz never would have consumed the drink had she realized what it contained.

"She was very, very vigilant about what she needed to do to keep herself safe," her friend says. "I guarantee if Sarah had known how much caffeine this was, she never would have touched it with a 10-foot pole." The family wants Panera to adequately explain the caffeine content in the lemonades and label them as energy drinks so the same thing doesn't happen to someone else, lawyers say. People reports that people on social media have been calling out the drinks for a while now, with one content creator saying she was contacted by pregnant women saying they never would have realized how much caffeine they were consuming without her video. Healthy adults are typically advised to drink no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine per day (about four or five cups of coffee). Panera says it is investigating, and that the company "strongly believe[s] in transparency around our ingredients." (More Panera Bread stories.)