‘A Troubling Halo of Health’: How Celsius Became Red Bull for Women

OOn Dakota Johnson’s first day on set filming her directorial debut Loser Baby , she grabbed a can of Celsius and started drinking. She said she spent the rest of the shoot with a Celsius in her hand. She recalled feeling elated, and while she also had a hard time sleeping, I’m sure it was just inspiration from the creative process coursing through her body.

Then her costume designer let her in on a secret: Celsius is an energy drink that contains 200 mg of caffeine per can. That’s why she stayed up all night.

“On the back it just says ‘B12, Vitamin A.’ I thought they were vitamins,” Johnson later said allowed to Variety. “I didn’t realize I was actually just overdosing on caffeine.”

Johnson isn’t the only one to mistake Celsius for a health drink based on its packaging.

Celsius bills itself as a workout supplement free of sugar and artificial preservatives. Drink one and, according to the label, you’ll get an “essential energy” boost that “speeds up metabolism” and “burns body fat.”

But turn the can over and you’ll see in tiny print that it contains 200 mg of caffeine. That’s the equivalent of two cups of coffee, or nearly six cans of Coke. It’s similar to the Prime energy drink that was the target of Chuck Schumer last year: in a letter The New York senator demanded an FDA investigation into Prime’s “marked” caffeine content.

“I didn’t know it looked like Red Bull,” Johnson said. “I thought it was a natural drink.”

If Red Bull is an abbreviation for Formula 1 racing teams and partying students, and Prime is associated with male YouTubers selling caffeine to pubescent boys, Celsius strikes with another group – and Johnson could be the avatar of that.

How Celsius Won Over Women

For decades, energy drinks like Monster, Red Bull and the caffeinated and alcoholic Four Loko have targeted the interests of young men.

“These drinks were associated with energy, extreme sports, girls in bikinis,” said Frances Fleming-Milici, who studies energy drink marketing at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for food policy and health. A 2015 study found that men who value masculine ideals often believe that drinking energy drinks makes them macho.

Celsius follows that playbook – to a point. The brand has worked with YouTuber and professional boxer Jake Paul (a deliberate choice, considering his brother, Logan Paul, puts his name on Prime), Nascar drivers, and college football stars (this, despite the The NCAA ban high levels of stimulants, including guarana, a plant extract found in Celsius and other energy drinks). But Celsius seems to be making waves outside of man caves and sporting events. How has it won over women? By softening its image and tapping into the multibillion-dollar wellness industry.

Slim white cans of Celsius feature cheerful graphics of fresh fruit, images of people exercising and the inspiring slogan “Live Fit” – a far cry from the fighting bulls or gruesome claw marks on cans of Red Bull and Monster. There’s no mention of caffeine on the front of the can, and instead of “energy drink,” Celsius uses the softer term “essential energy.”

On TikTok, most of the drink’s fans are young women in expensive sportswear who enjoy exercising. say Celsius helps fuel their gym days or boost their 3pm business grind. The brand’s Instagram feed features DJ and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Xandra Pohl Drinking Celsius in a swimming pooland Olympic track and field champion Tara Davis-Woodhall take sips from a can between reps.

“The sleek can, the color choices on the bottle, and the influencers they’ve chosen to promote it all create an aura of health around it,” Fleming-Milici said, “which I find troubling because it makes people unaware of how much caffeine they’re getting.”

Representatives for Celsius did not respond to a request for comment.

In a fortune interviewCelsius CEO John Fieldly attributed the brand’s success—it earned $1.3 billion last year—to this shift in marketing strategy. Initially, Celsius leaned into “being more scientific,” touting itself as a “thermogenic” drink with a “negative-calorie” effect. But during the pandemic, the company pivoted to fitness and lifestyle branding, posting with gym franchises like Barry’s Bootcamp and partnering with first responders like nurses and police officers.

“The liquid has to be more than the ingredients in the can,” Fieldly said. “We want Celsius to look like the Apple logo, or the Starbucks logo, or the iconic Monster Energy claw.”

It’s well on its way: Celsius is now the third largest energy drink company in the US. And a cult has developed behind the beverage among women focused on wellness. For them, Celsius is a must-have accessory for cool girls with busy schedules. The it-girl hosts of the anti-woke podcast Red Scare even joke referred In a recent episode it was used as an alternative to cocaine.

‘Celsius drinkers, are you okay?’

Jill Lewis, a 58-year-old publicist living in Toronto, calls herself a “reformed Celsius junkie.” She’s been off the stuff for about a month now, after drinking five or six cans a day for two or three years.

“If I was hungry, instead of having a snack, I would have a Celsius and feel full,” Lewis said.

Lewis started drinking Celsius because the label promised to boost her metabolism and give her an energy boost. “I work out all the time, and I’m always looking for tricks,” she said. It wasn’t until one of Lewis’s adult children told her to stop drinking the beverage that she realized it wasn’t as healthy as she first thought.

A doctor told the new york post that energy drinks like Celsius may speed up your metabolism in the short term, but are unlikely to produce lasting results; experts also say that energy drinks have limited, if any, effect on weight loss and should complement a balanced diet and exercise. (The six studies Celsius published on its website to support its claims of metabolism-boosting, calorie-burning effects were funded by the brand.) That didn’t stop a rumor from circulating on TikTok last year that Celsius, which retails for about $3 a can, contains semaglutide, the active ingredient in the expensive diabetes drug Ozempic.

This summer, the Wall Street Journal published published a report of young women with eating disorders who drank Celsius to feel full without having to eat a regular meal. The chief of the Cleveland Clinic’s division of adolescent medicine told the Journal that a third of the hospital’s patients with eating disorders drink energy drinks. (Celsius declined to comment for that article; the drink does not market itself as a meal replacement.)

Online, some Celsius drinkers say the product’s high caffeine content doesn’t make them feel good. “Celsius drinkers, are you all okay,” one woman said placed on TikTok. “I just took my first sip ever and my body went into shock.” In other videos posted to the app, people reported feeling fatigued and getting headaches and heart palpitations when they tried to stop drinking Celsius.

According to Dr. Siyab Panhwar, an interventional cardiologist at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center in Minnesota, these may be symptoms of caffeine withdrawal.

Stimulants like caffeine raise a person’s blood pressure and adrenaline levels. Other ingredients like taurine and guarana extract — both found in Celsius — can amplify caffeine’s effects. “It puts you in a kind of fight-or-flight mode, and that’s when people feel more wired and energized,” Panhwar said.

According to the FDA, it is safe for the average healthy person to consume about 400 mg of caffeine per day, which is about four cups of coffee. “Imagine if you get jittery from one or two cups of coffee,” Panhwar added. “Drinking an energy drink is much worse, and consuming multiple cans of a beverage per day over a long period of time is potentially very problematic.” The makers of Celsius advise consumers should not consume more than two cans per day.

The FDA does not limit caffeine in energy drinks because they consider them dietary supplements. The only limit is for cola-like drinks like Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Jennifer L. Temple, director of the nutrition and health research lab at the University at Buffalo, sees this as a problem.

“It is incomprehensible to me that the FDA states that the upper limit for caffeine in Coca-Cola is 71 mg per 12 ounces, when there is no upper limit for a beverage like Celsius, Red Bull or Prime,” Temple said.

As for whether Celsius is the vitamin-rich drink Johnson thought it was, the drink does contain vitamins C and B12. Customers a class action lawsuit settled against the brand last year, claiming the label was misleading because it said the drink contained “no preservatives” when it actually did contain citric acid. (Celsius countered that the citric acid was added for flavor.)

Lewis kicked her Celsius habit just before she went on a detox trip to a spa. It wasn’t hard to do. “I’m good at quitting cold turkey. That’s what I did with smoking after college,” Lewis said. “You just ignore the symptoms.”

Still, when she travels to New York for work, she sometimes walks into a corner store, sees rows of Celsius drinks for sale, and feels a pang of longing. “I think, ‘Should I get one?’” she said. “Damn, I wish they were good for me.”