Quick answer: The part of an energy drink that gets you through the afternoon is the caffeine. Almost everything else on the can is sugar, flavour, and a list of extras that a 2012 review in Nutrition Reviews could not find good evidence for. So the honest list of alternatives is short. A cup of coffee or tea gives you the same caffeine without the sugar. Yerba mate does the same with a different taste. And three things that are not drinks at all, a glass of water, a ten-minute walk, and a short nap, have controlled trials behind them. This guide walks through each one, says what the evidence does and does not show, and finishes with where CafeBank's two portable coffee formats fit and where they do not.
The afternoon slump has a reliable shape. Lunch settles, the inbox thickens, and somewhere between two and four o'clock the day feels heavier than it did at ten. A lot of people solve that with a can from the corner shop, and then feel faintly guilty about it. The guilt is not the useful part. The useful question is what the can was actually doing for you, because once you know that, the alternatives sort themselves out.
What an energy drink is, ingredient by ingredient
Start with the label. A typical can carries caffeine, sugar or a sweetener, a handful of B vitamins, taurine, and one or two plant extracts, with flavouring and carbonated water making up the rest. McLellan and Lieberman reviewed the published trials on those ingredients in 2012, in Nutrition Reviews. They put a typical 235 ml serving at between 40 and 250 mg of caffeine, which the review describes as doses that improve cognitive performance on their own. For the other components, their wording was blunt: "an overwhelming lack of evidence" that anything besides the caffeine contributes to physical or cognitive performance. The two partial exceptions they named were glucose and one plant extract, and both were rated weak.
The sugar deserves its own sentence, because the "sugar rush" is the part most people think they can feel. A 2019 meta-analysis in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews pooled 31 studies and 1,259 participants and found no positive effect of carbohydrate on any measure of mood at any time point. Within the first hour, sugar was associated with more fatigue and less alertness than placebo, not less. So the sugar in the can is not helping the afternoon. At best it is neutral. The caffeine is doing the work, and the sugar is along for the ride.
So you are not looking for a replacement for an energy drink. You are looking for a sensible way to get a moderate dose of caffeine, plus the handful of non-caffeine options that have real trials behind them.
Coffee: the plain answer
A cup of coffee is caffeine in water, with nothing you did not add yourself. That is the whole argument for it, and it is a good one. The dose question is the one that matters, and we have already written it up properly, so we will not repeat it here. Our guide to how much caffeine is too much covers the daily and single-serving figures the European Food Safety Authority set in 2015, and it has a section on energy drinks specifically. The short version is that a single serving of up to 200 mg and a habitual intake of up to 400 mg a day are the figures EFSA considered without safety concern for healthy adults, and a large can can use up most of a single serving on its own.
Timing is where an afternoon coffee goes wrong more often than dose. Two of our guides are about exactly that. When should you stop drinking coffee sets a cut-off you can work back from your bedtime, and find your coffee chronotype explains why the right cut-off is not the same for everyone. If you are the sort of person who wakes up and reaches for a cup before doing anything else, the 90-minute cortisol myth is worth ten minutes.
And if coffee has stopped feeling like it does anything, another cup is rarely the fix. Coffee doesn't wake me up anymore covers tolerance and the boring reasons a cup can stop working.
Tea and matcha: less caffeine, plus one extra
Tea is the second obvious answer, and it is usually a lower dose per cup than coffee, which for an afternoon is often the point. It also brings one ingredient coffee does not. Tea leaves contain the amino acid L-theanine. Matcha is the whole leaf, ground and drunk rather than steeped and discarded, and a 2017 review in Current Pharmaceutical Design reports that drinking matcha gives a much higher intake of the tea's constituents, L-theanine among them, than regular green tea. There is a real literature on caffeine and L-theanine taken together, some of it positive and some of it null. We went through that literature line by line in does adding L-theanine really cancel coffee jitters, so the evidence lives there rather than being half-repeated here.
Practically, a pot of tea at three o'clock is a smaller decision than a can at three o'clock. The dose is lower, there is no sugar unless you add it, and making it takes two minutes away from the screen.
Yerba mate: the same working ingredient, a different cup
Yerba mate is the South American answer to the same question. It is a caffeine-containing leaf, and how much caffeine ends up in your cup depends more on how you make it than on the leaf. Meinhart and colleagues showed this in 2010 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, simulating the two traditional preparations. The tereré preparation, which is steeped without heating the water, extracted about two and a half times the xanthines of the strongest hot-water chimarrão preparation they tested. So "a serving of mate" is not a fixed dose in the way a labelled can is, and anyone counting their intake should treat mate as a range rather than a number.
That is not a reason to avoid it. If you like the taste, mate is a reasonable afternoon cup, and it comes without the sugar problem the can has.
The alternatives that are not drinks
This is the section most energy drink articles skip, and it is the one with some of the cleanest trials.
A glass of water. Two controlled studies from the same research group tested what mild dehydration, around one to one and a half percent of body mass, does to mood and attention. Ganio and colleagues in 2011, in the British Journal of Nutrition, found that in 26 young men it increased fatigue and tension and worsened vigilance and working memory. Armstrong and colleagues in 2012, in the Journal of Nutrition, found that in 25 young women it degraded mood, raised the perceived difficulty of tasks, and lowered concentration, while most measures of cognitive performance were unaffected. Both studies produced the dehydration with exercise, the men's in a warm room, so neither is a picture of an ordinary office afternoon. But one to one and a half percent is a plausible deficit by mid-afternoon if you have not drunk anything since coffee. A glass of water before the next caffeine decision costs nothing and removes one variable.
A ten-minute walk. Randolph and O'Connor ran a direct comparison in 2017, published in Physiology and Behavior. Eighteen college women who were chronically short of sleep did three sessions: ten minutes of low-to-moderate stair walking, a 50 mg caffeine capsule, or a placebo capsule. The stair walking raised self-reported vigour immediately afterwards more than either capsule. Other measures, including working memory and reaction time, did not differ. So the finding is narrow: a short walk beat a small dose of caffeine on how energetic people felt, in a small sample of one population, and nothing else moved. That narrow finding is still useful, because the walk is the cheapest option in this article and has no timing problem at bedtime.
A short nap. Brooks and Lack, in the journal Sleep in 2006, compared afternoon naps of five, ten, twenty and thirty minutes against no nap in 24 young adults who had been restricted to about five hours of sleep the night before. The ten-minute nap produced immediate improvements in sleepiness, fatigue, vigour and cognitive performance, with some benefits lasting about two and a half hours. The thirty-minute nap produced a period of grogginess first, then improvements. If you have somewhere to close your eyes, ten minutes is the figure to remember. If you have ever woken from a longer nap feeling worse, why you wake up groggy explains the mechanism.
None of these replace sleep, and if the afternoon slump is a daily event, sleep is usually the upstream cause. Our guide to the 3 p.m. crash starts from lunch, light and the body clock before it gets to caffeine at all, and why you're more tired in your 40s covers the slower change that people often mistake for a caffeine problem. If a wearable is telling you coffee ruined last night, what a sleep tracker can and cannot measure is worth reading before you change anything on its say-so.
Reading a label: what is doing the work
Whatever you pick up instead of the can, four things on the label are worth reading every time.
- Caffeine per serving, in milligrams. Not "natural caffeine" and not "energy blend". A number. If the label does not give one, you are guessing, and with mate or a house blend you are guessing at a range.
- Servings per container. A large can is often two servings on the label and one serving in real life. Multiply.
- Sugar per serving. The meta-analysis above is the reason. The sugar is not helping the afternoon, and it is the part of the can that has nothing to do with why you bought it.
- The length of the ingredient list. A long list of extras is not a reason to pay more. The 2012 review found no good evidence that the usual extras add anything to the caffeine.
Two categories deserve a sentence because people ask. Mushroom and adaptogen coffees are a real market, and the evidence for each ingredient is a separate question. We have gone through the main ones: lion's mane coffee, rhodiola vs ashwagandha, and the coffee and adaptogens stacking guide for anyone combining them. None of those change the caffeine arithmetic above.
Mistakes people make when they swap out the can
- Swapping the can for a bigger coffee. The problem with the can was rarely the caffeine dose. Trading 150 mg in a can for 300 mg in a large takeaway cup solves the sugar and creates a bedtime problem.
- Skipping the water. Two trials above suggest the first thing to rule out is the cheapest. Drink the glass, wait fifteen minutes, then decide.
- Treating the walk as a consolation prize. It is the only option here that beat caffeine head to head on a measure, in one small trial. It deserves a real try before you dismiss it.
- Napping for forty minutes. Ten was the number in the study. Thirty produced grogginess first. Set an alarm.
- Letting the format decide the timing. A drink that is easy to carry is easy to drink at six in the evening. Possible is not the same as sensible.
Where CafeBank fits
If you have read this far, you already know the argument for coffee over the can: the same caffeine, and a short ingredient list you can read on the pack. The two formats below differ on sugar, so that is stated for each. CafeBank's two portable formats are built for the situations where a proper cup is not available, which is most afternoons for most people. What follows is composition and format, because that is what you can verify on the pack.
CafeBank SFE Maca & Guarana Coffee 10g is a single-serve 3-in-1 instant coffee stick: single-origin Arabica, a dairy creamer and sugar, with the two plant ingredients, maca and guarana. One stick goes into 150 to 200 ml of hot water. The stick is 14.5 by 3.4 cm, the length of a pen, and a handful of them sit in a desk drawer or a bag pocket. CafeBank SFE Maca & Guarana Coffee Tabs carry the same coffee and the same two plant ingredients, freeze-dried and compressed into tablets, with no dairy creamer and no added sugar. Each flat 7 by 7 cm sachet holds four tabs and needs no water, no cup, and no preparation, which makes it the format for the situations the can used to cover: the platform, the queue, the car. The differences between the two are in our Tabs vs instant coffee sticks comparison, and the day-by-day logistics are in functional coffee on the go.
On the two plant ingredients, we keep to what they are. Maca is an Andean root that has been cultivated in Peru for over 2,000 years as a traditional food. Guarana is an Amazonian seed whose naturally occurring caffeine has been part of Brazilian beverage tradition for generations, so both formats deliver caffeine from two sources, the coffee and the guarana. What the modern research shows about each, including where it is thin and where it is null, is in the maca coffee guide, the guarana vs coffee guide, and guarana vs yerba mate vs coffee, which puts the caffeine-per-serving question side by side for all three. The plant extracts in both formats are produced by supercritical CO2 extraction, with no ethanol or hexane in the herbal extraction process. That is a statement about how the extracts are made, not about what they do, and what SFE means in a functional coffee explains the method.
Both formats contain milk. Neither is a substitute for the water, the walk, or the nap above. And if your afternoon coffee happens at a desk with a kettle, you do not need either format. A cup of whatever you already drink does the same job, and we would rather say so than sell you a solution to a problem you do not have.
Who should take a little extra care
Everything in this article is food, but caffeine is caffeine wherever it comes from. Anyone who is pregnant or nursing, sensitive to caffeine, or keeping their intake low should count a coffee stick, a serving of Tabs, a cup of mate, or a can the same way, against the same daily figure. The 2003 Health Canada review by Nawrot and colleagues, in Food Additives and Contaminants, put the figures at up to 400 mg a day for healthy adults and no more than 300 mg a day for women of reproductive age, and EFSA's 2015 opinion set 200 mg a day for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Both portable formats above contain milk, so they are not suitable for anyone with a milk allergy or lactose intolerance.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Nothing in this article is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This article is general information about food ingredients, not medical advice. If you are pregnant or nursing, take prescription medication, or have a heart, thyroid or anxiety condition, talk to your doctor before adding a caffeinated botanical product to your routine.
Frequently asked questions
What can I drink instead of an energy drink in the afternoon?
Coffee, tea, or yerba mate. All three deliver the ingredient that was doing the work in the can, caffeine, without the sugar. Choose by the dose you want: tea is usually the lowest per cup, coffee the highest, and mate depends on how you prepare it.
Is the sugar in an energy drink giving me energy?
Not according to the evidence. A 2019 meta-analysis of 31 studies found no positive effect of carbohydrate on any measure of mood, and more fatigue and less alertness than placebo in the first hour after eating it.
Do the B vitamins and taurine in energy drinks do anything?
A 2012 review in Nutrition Reviews found an overwhelming lack of evidence that components of energy drinks other than caffeine contribute to physical or cognitive performance; the only partial exceptions it named, glucose and one plant extract, were rated weak. The extras are on the label; the caffeine is doing the work.
Does a walk really work better than caffeine?
In one small 2017 trial, ten minutes of stair walking raised feelings of vigour more than a 50 mg caffeine capsule in 18 sleep-deprived young women. Working memory and reaction time did not differ. It is a narrow result, but the walk is free and does not affect bedtime.
How long should an afternoon nap be?
Ten minutes, in the study that compared five, ten, twenty and thirty. The ten-minute nap improved sleepiness, fatigue, vigour and performance immediately, and the thirty-minute nap produced grogginess before it helped.
Are CafeBank's coffee sticks and Tabs energy drinks?
No. They are coffee formats. The 10g stick is a 3-in-1 instant coffee: single-origin Arabica, a dairy creamer and sugar, with the two plant ingredients, maca and guarana, prepared in 150 to 200 ml of hot water. The Tabs are freeze-dried coffee with the same two plant ingredients, compressed into tablets, with no dairy creamer and no added sugar. Both contain caffeine from the coffee and the guarana, and both contain milk.
References
1. McLellan TM, Lieberman HR. (2012). Do energy drinks contain active components other than caffeine? Nutrition reviews. 70(12):730-44. DOI: 10.1111/j.1753-4887.2012.00525.x. PMID: 23206286.
2. Mantantzis K, Schlaghecken F, Sünram-Lea SI, Maylor EA. (2019). Sugar rush or sugar crash? A meta-analysis of carbohydrate effects on mood. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews. 101:45-67. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.03.016. PMID: 30951762.
3. Meinhart AD, Bizzotto CS, Ballus CA, Poloni Rybka AC, Sobrinho MR, Cerro-Quintana RS, Teixeira-Filho J, Godoy HT. (2010). Methylxanthines and phenolics content extracted during the consumption of mate (Ilex paraguariensis St. Hil) beverages. Journal of agricultural and food chemistry. 58(4):2188-93. DOI: 10.1021/jf903781w. PMID: 20058928.
4. Ganio MS, Armstrong LE, Casa DJ, McDermott BP, Lee EC, Yamamoto LM, Marzano S, Lopez RM, Jimenez L, Le Bellego L, Chevillotte E, Lieberman HR. (2011). Mild dehydration impairs cognitive performance and mood of men. The British journal of nutrition. 106(10):1535-43. DOI: 10.1017/S0007114511002005. PMID: 21736786.
5. Armstrong LE, Ganio MS, Casa DJ, Lee EC, McDermott BP, Klau JF, Jimenez L, Le Bellego L, Chevillotte E, Lieberman HR. (2012). Mild dehydration affects mood in healthy young women. The Journal of nutrition. 142(2):382-8. DOI: 10.3945/jn.111.142000. PMID: 22190027.
6. Randolph DD, O'Connor PJ. (2017). Stair walking is more energizing than low dose caffeine in sleep deprived young women. Physiology & behavior. 174:128-135. DOI: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.03.013. PMID: 28302573.
7. Brooks A, Lack L. (2006). A brief afternoon nap following nocturnal sleep restriction: which nap duration is most recuperative? Sleep. 29(6):831-40. DOI: 10.1093/sleep/29.6.831. PMID: 16796222.
8. Nawrot P, Jordan S, Eastwood J, Rotstein J, Hugenholtz A, Feeley M. (2003). Effects of caffeine on human health. Food additives and contaminants. 20(1):1-30. DOI: 10.1080/0265203021000007840. PMID: 12519715.
9. European Food Safety Authority. (2015). Scientific Opinion on the safety of caffeine. EFSA Journal. 13(5):4102. DOI: 10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4102.
10. Dietz C, Dekker M. (2017). Effect of Green Tea Phytochemicals on Mood and Cognition. Current pharmaceutical design. 23(19):2876-2905. DOI: 10.2174/1381612823666170105151800. PMID: 28056735.