Sarah Katz was 21, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, and careful about her heart condition. She took daily medication. She avoided energy drinks. Then she ordered a Charged Lemonade at the Panera Bread on campus, a 30-ounce cup packing 390 milligrams of caffeine, nearly the entire recommended daily maximum for an adult, and it killed her.
Her parents say the drink triggered a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. They filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Panera Bread. And now they're pushing a bill on Capitol Hill that would force energy drink makers and restaurants to tell customers exactly what they're swallowing.
The case raises a blunt question: Why does the federal government require calorie counts and peanut warnings on food labels but let companies sell near-lethal doses of caffeine with little more than a wink?
Sarah Katz had long QT syndrome, a heart-rhythm disorder. Her mother, Jill Katz, a lawyer, told the New York Post that the family discovered the condition after Sarah suffered a seizure during a swim lesson at age five. Doctors prescribed nadolol, a daily beta blocker, and gave the family a simple rule.
"They just said stay away from energy drinks."
Jill Katz described the condition as manageable. "Once you find it, it's just like any other type of condition that you need to manage, like diabetes or a food allergy," she said. "It can be life-threatening in some cases, but if you do the right things, you'll be OK."
Sarah did the right things. She studied at Penn. She worked as a research assistant at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She studied abroad in China, became fluent in Mandarin, and volunteered for CPR trainings at a rec center in Germantown. She would have turned 25 this April.
But the Charged Lemonade wasn't marketed as an energy drink. The wrongful death lawsuit alleges Panera displayed it alongside "noncaffeinated and/or less caffeinated drinks" at the campus location. A customer with a heart condition, one who knew to avoid energy drinks, had no obvious reason to think a lemonade could stop her heart.
The recommended maximum daily caffeine intake for adults is 400 milligrams. A single 30-ounce Charged Lemonade contained 390. One cup. Nearly the whole day's limit.
Panera pulled the drink from its menu in 2024, after the lawsuit drew public attention. The chain now advertises an "Energy Refresher" on its website, listed at 28 milligrams per 20 fluid ounces. That's a 93 percent reduction. Panera made the change quietly, without acknowledging fault.
The broader market hasn't budged. More than 500 different energy drinks crowd store shelves and restaurant counters across the country. Many carry caffeine loads that rival or exceed what killed Sarah Katz, and the FDA's regulatory framework treats them with surprising leniency.
Caffeine regulation in the United States is a mess of categories. Over-the-counter drugs containing caffeine must list the content and any risks on the label. Carbonated beverages with added caffeine face a caffeine-level cap. But energy drinks, the fastest-growing segment, slip through gaps in both frameworks.
Medical experts have urged the FDA to impose stricter rules on energy drink production and sales since at least 1997. Red Bull arrived in the American market around the same time. Nearly three decades later, the regulatory landscape hasn't caught up.
Dr. Victoria L. Vetter, a cardiologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, published a report titled "Cardiovascular Toxicity of Energy Drinks in Youth: A Call for Regulation" roughly two years after Sarah's death. The report noted that between 2008 and 2015, 38 energy drink-related deaths and 14,000 toxicity cases were reported to the FDA and the National Poison Data System. Despite those numbers, the U.S. remains one of the least regulated, and most profitable, energy drink markets in the world.
Thirty-eight deaths. Fourteen thousand poisoning cases. And still no mandatory caffeine disclosure on most of these products.
As of January 2024, Sarah's parents partnered with Rep. Robert Menendez, a Democrat representing North Jersey's 8th District, to draft the bipartisan Sarah Katz Caffeine Safety Act. The bill would require clear caffeine content labels on energy drinks and force restaurants to flag any menu item containing more than 150 milligrams of caffeine.
Menendez framed the legislation as transparency, not prohibition. "I assure you it's not a ban," he said. "I still drink Diet Cokes. I occasionally have a Celsius."
He pointed to a broader concern beyond caffeine alone.
"Increasingly it's not just caffeine [in energy drinks] but other stimulants that you might not be aware of. That greater transparency is something people crave right now."
Menendez also acknowledged how common high-caffeine consumption is among young adults: "This is a common issue in the young adult demographic. Even for me, in law school I would have as many Red Bulls as I needed to study for a final exam, and I never thought twice about it."
The American Beverage Association declined to comment on the bill but said member companies "already voluntarily disclose the amount of caffeine on each bottle and can they sell." Red Bull did not respond to press inquiries but states on its website that the product "meets and exceeds the safety and labeling requirements" of the FDA and that it "voluntarily places the caffeine content on its cans." Monster did not respond at all.
Voluntary disclosure is the industry's favorite phrase. It's also the phrase companies use right up until someone dies and a jury starts asking questions.
Jill Katz draws a direct line between the energy drink industry and Big Tobacco's playbook.
"It's history repeating itself with the tobacco industry. They actively target children and teens to get them hooked."
She compared the proposed caffeine labels to existing food disclosures. "It's just like disclosures for calories or if something contains peanuts," she said. Then she sharpened the point with an analogy any parent would understand: "I don't want to see in teeny, tiny black print whether it's a bunny hill or a double black diamond that I'm about to go down."
The comparison to tobacco isn't perfect, but the structural similarity is hard to ignore. An industry sells a stimulant product to young consumers, fights mandatory labeling, insists voluntary measures are enough, and points to FDA compliance as a shield, while the body count, however small, keeps ticking upward.
The Katz family isn't alone in this fight. Martha Lopez-Anderson, executive director of Parent Heart Watch, lost her 10-year-old son Sean to sudden cardiac arrest in 2004. Sean's death was unrelated to caffeine, but Lopez-Anderson has since dedicated herself to educating the public about underlying heart conditions and the dangers of unregulated stimulants.
She joined the Katzes on Capitol Hill to advocate for the bill.
"Every time I see somebody with an energy drink, I just cringe because I'm like, 'Do you know what you're drinking?' Half the time people don't."
Lopez-Anderson described her own blindsiding: "I considered myself a resourceful and informed parent, but I was completely blindsided by SCA. Thinking my kid would collapse and die like turning off a light switch? Never."
Jill Katz noted that with long QT syndrome, "Very often the first episode is death." That's the cruel math. The condition is manageable once diagnosed, but if a massive caffeine dose triggers an arrhythmia before anyone knows the heart is vulnerable, there's no second chance.
Strip away the politics and the Sarah Katz Caffeine Safety Act asks for two things:
That's it. Not a ban. Not a cap. Just a label. The same kind of label the government already requires for calories, allergens, and sodium. The kind of information a 21-year-old with a heart condition would need to make a life-or-death decision at a lunch counter.
Panera didn't give Sarah Katz that information. The lawsuit alleges the Charged Lemonade sat next to ordinary drinks, unmarked for its extraordinary caffeine load. She followed her doctors' advice. She avoided energy drinks. She just didn't know she was drinking one.
Conservatives rightly resist government overreach. Nobody wants Washington deciding how much coffee you can drink. But labeling isn't a ban. It's disclosure. It's the free market working the way it's supposed to, with informed consumers making informed choices.
The energy drink industry generated enormous profits while hiding behind "voluntary" labels that consumers routinely miss or misunderstand. When a 21-year-old dies because a lemonade contained more caffeine than a doctor would prescribe in a week, and the company's defense is that the information was technically available somewhere, the system has failed.
Sarah Katz's parents have channeled grief into something concrete: a simple transparency requirement backed by a bipartisan bill. The beverage industry's response, silence from Monster, boilerplate from Red Bull, a dodge from the trade association, tells you everything about who fears sunlight.
If the market can't police itself, a label isn't tyranny. It's the bare minimum a free society owes its citizens before they take a sip.
