Red Bull Sugarfree Energy Drink

Just like regular Red Bull, but minus the awesome.

Energy drinks have long been the saviour of the brain-addled early riser who just can't stand the taste of coffee, providing a brew that breaks through the crusty sleep in your eyes and gives you a spring in your step. Red Bull is perhaps the most prolific of all the energy drinks, with their Red Bull Air Race kicking off yearly (essentially an exciting gathering of planes flying in an utterly reckless - and awesome - way), as well as other sporting/racing events.

All that doesn't really matter, however, because the crux of this review should be about the drink itself; specifically the Sugarfree version. Every man and his dog (as well as spouse, colleague and second cousin [twice removed]) has either heard of or tried the original Red Bull, but the Sugarfree version claims to give the same kick in the pants without the same straight-to-your-thighs sugar that other drinks offer.

It's got a nutrition panel on the back of the can with more zeroes than Bill Gate's bank account - with zeroes for fat, carbohydrates (including sugars), protein and dietary fibre. Incredibly there's only 14kJ of energy per 100mL, or 3.34 calories for those few people who still use imperial measurements. To put that into perspective, if you're doing light office work and weigh around 80kg you should burn around 126 calories in an hour, which is 527.184kJ - so Sugarfree Red Bull is providing about enough energy for you to muster up a few keystrokes.

So what is in the damn thing, you ask, considering there's almost no real nutritional value here at all (making that nutrition panel almost superfluous). Well thankfully they've packed 80mg of caffeine into this 250mL can, as well as 1000mg of taurine and 50mg of inositol (a dauntingly named, if actually helpful chemical). The sweetener in this version of the drink is sucralose, a substance that refuses to break apart even when pasteurised, sterilised, baked and subjected to really high temperatures - in other words, it's gotta be good for you.

 Now we've got the technical side of the drink out of the way, we're left with a can full of something that really is nothing that is supposed to wake you up. Dubious, at best, but we cracked the can open regardless and took the first sip of this can full of empty calories.