​Jamie Oliver Wants To Ban Selling Energy Drinks To Kids

First turkey twizzlers, then chicken nuggets. Now energy drinks. It seems Jamie Oliver is on the warpath, and this time it's our caffeinated drinks that are in the line of fire.

Credit: PA

Many of us are pretty reliant on the likes of Red Bull, Relentless, Monster and Rockstar for a long car journey or to get us through a hungover day at work. Some of us like to mix it with Jägermeister as our shooter of choice. It's nice to have them around, just in case we need 'em.

But apparently there's a worrying rise of children getting a buzz from the drinks, and now celebrity chef and campaigner Jamie is calling for the government to ban selling energy drinks to kids - saying there's a worrying correlation between the drinks and poor performance at school.

He's saying that there should be a new age limit of 16 on all sales, and that we should be following the guidance that already exists on cans - stating that the drinks aren't suitable for children.

"If the energy drink industry is literally telling us their products are 'not recommended for children' on the cans, why can kids as young as 10 buy them whenever they want?" he said.

"This consumption is compromising our kids, and our teachers, too - we have to do something about it. We urgently need the government to step up and put age restrictions on the sale of energy drinks to all under 16s."

According to a study by the European Food Safety Authority, as much at 69 percent of teenagers - and 24 percent of children under the age of 10 - consume energy drinks.

Supermarket Waitrose has announced that it is to voluntarily ban the sale of energy drinks to youngsters in its stores.

Teachers' union NASUWT has also called for a ban.

Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, has said that children's health needs to be put first.

"Schools do all they can to provide an environment conducive to learning, but they can't control what's on sale beyond the school gates. If the Government is serious about protecting children, it needs to put their interests before the profits of the energy drinks industry and ban the sale of these harmful products to under 16s," he said.

Of course, Jamie's got a long history with combatting diet-related issues in children, having famously led the way for improving school dinners in the UK.

But let's not also forget when he went to a school in America and showed them the gruesome process of how chicken nuggets are made. When he asked who'd want to eat nuggets after seeing all the nasty bits that went into them, the children all raised their hands. Classic.