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Six Continents Index has released what it describes as the first global comparative assessment of energy drinks across all six inhabited continents, highlighting a major regional differences in product formulation, ingredient use and labelling standards.

The project, led by water sommelier Pat Eckert, assessed energy drinks from markets including the US, Germany, Japan, China, Kenya, Chile, Nepal and New Zealand. Each brand was counted once, using a selected core or flagship SKU as sold and labelled to consumers.

Products were evaluated against a 36-criteria product quality index covering verifiable characterisitcs such as caffeine quantity and declaration, sugar content and type, vitamin content, pasteurisation, packaging, traceability and label readability. The assessment did not include taste testing, branding or popularity measures.

According to Six Continents Index, Europe achieved the highest overall score at continental level, followed by Oceania and Asia. North America, described in the release as the world's largest energy drink market revenue, ranked last overall among the six continents.

The study found that 85.7% of European energy drinks assessed were pasteurised, compared with 12% in North America and under 1% in South America. In Asia, 78.9% of products used real sugar, whil in North America the figure was 8%.

Six Continents Index also reported that 84% of North American energy drinks relied enetirely on artificial sweeteners, compared with 4.2% in Europe and almost none in Asia, Australia, South America and Africa. European products contained an average of 4.0 vitamins per product, compared with 2.9 in North America.

Aspartame appeared in 10.5% of the global sample, with 43% of aspartame-containing products coming from Africa. Clear BPA-free labelling was found on only 1.4% of products assessed worlwide.

At brand level, Hungary's Hell Energy achieved the highest overall score for objective product quality in the index. Germany's 28 Black ranked second, followed by Take Off, also from Germany.

The report also noted that Red Bull was the only energy drink brand found in virtually every market assessed, while Japan's Lipovitan-D was the oldest brand included in the study, having been launched in 1962.

Six Continents Index said the findings show that while energy drinks are a global category, product formulation differs significantly by region, with Europe more likely to use pasteurisation, North America more reliant on artificial sweeteners and Asia more likely to use real sugar.