In January this year, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver renewed calls to ban the sale of energy drinks to under-16s in the UK. And this time the movement has momentum – major UK supermarkets Waitrose, Aldi and Asda have followed through, banning the sale of the high-caffeine drinks to anyone under 16 years of age.

Tick this up as a huge win for the UK medical health industry. And now the question must be asked: should Australia follow suit? How bad for you really are energy drinks?

The Australian medical industry has been calling for stricter regulations since 2011, when 16-year-old Melbourne schoolgirl Sara Milosevic died after drinking four cans of a pre-mixed alcoholic energy drink. In the US, a number of teenage deaths have been linked to energy drinks, including Davis Allen Cripe and Lanna Hamman, both aged 16. Parents in the States have tried suing energy-drink companies; lawsuits against Monster and Red Bull are in the court system.

“The issue is the sugars and the stimulants,” says Dr Kieron Rooney, a senior lecturer in biochemistry and exercise physiology at the University of Sydney. “The toxicity of the stimulants in energy drinks can change depending on your body size. Because children are smaller, they’re naturally more susceptible than a larger individual. Still, adults can have the nasty side effect of overstimulation, too.”

The common thread among victims is their consumption of energy drinks before developing an arrhythmia – an abnormal heart rhythm – that results in their sudden death. People can live with arrhythmias for years, but in some cases the condition results in ventricular fibrillation, which prevents the heart from pumping blood and causes cardiac arrest.

“The difficulty is trying to link between an energy drink and a cardiac arrest and an actual causation,” Professor Chris Semsarian, a professor of medicine at the University of Sydney and a cardiac specialist at the city’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at the time of Sara Milosevic’s death, told the ABC. “In other words, that the energy drink caused the rhythm problem. That’s a very difficult thing to prove, but there seems to be more and more numbers of these cases being reported.”

Last year, 56 calls were made to the NSW Poisons Information Centre around energy drinks, with 71 per cent of those about children. “Their symptoms range from vomiting to people being very agitated with their heart racing,” says Jared Brown, head of the centre. “Then there are those who get more significant toxicity with chest pains similar to a mild heart attack, and people with severe agitation to the point of needing some sedation, and rarely people have seizures as well. In the last five years, 25 per cent were hospitalised.”

Dr Rooney believes Australian supermarkets have a responsibility, as a significant part of the food chain, for the health of our society, because they can control the supply. If supermarkets in the UK have stopped selling to children under 16, it’s a great first step, he believes.

“It’s hard enough to try and get children to drink only water, which is what we should all be doing,” says Dr Rooney. “But when you add sugary energy drinks to the mix, you’re asking for trouble. Energy drinks are atrocious, so any bid trying to reduce their consumption should be supported. Overstimulation is a real thing and can happen to adults as well as children.”

Dr Rooney would go further than an age-specific ban, believing the products should be banned completely.

“The way they’re marketed is a problem,” he says “It’s really hard because what you’ve got is parents trying to argue against millions of dollars of advertising, as well as all the pressure that comes with being a teenager and wanting to fit in. They’re marketed as a positive way to stay up all night and study or to party. It’s advocating an unhealthy lifestyle where people are being encouraged to burn themselves out, and that’s not what we should be advocating. We shouldn’t be training young people that relying on stimulants to finish a job or cram in last-minute study is a normal thing to do.”