Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagle and you're listening to the

nutrition diva quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous

there's a lot of new energy drinks on the market these days, and many of them contain big

doses of B12, thiamen, riboflavin, and other nutrients in the B vitamin family.

Supposedly, all those B vitamins

will give you a big burst of energy.

And the presence of all those vitamins on the label

also creates the impression that these drinks

are a good source of nutrition.

In reality, however, mega doses of B vitamins in energy drinks or in supplements

are really not much more than window dressing.

Like most nutrition myths, the idea that B vitamins give you energy

has a basis in fact, but the facts have gotten sort of twisted.

Marketing tends to do that.

Here's the scoop.

B vitamins are essential to the conversion of food energy into ATP, which is the form of energy that your cells use.

And by essential, I don't mean that it's nice to have them around, I mean that without them

it won't happen.

Converting food into cellular energy takes a lot of steps,

literally hundreds of chemical reactions.

B vitamins act as cofactors or helpers in many of those reactions.

However, that doesn't mean that taking a big dose of B vitamins is going to make you feel

...