This may help to explain the success of Silicon Valley, one of the last workplaces in America where hard and soft drinks still jostle for space in the company fridge.

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The amount of caffeine in energy drinks is hard to pin down, because many are marketed as supplements, rather than as foods, allowing them to wiggle around FDA regulations and labeling laws.

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Drinking alcohol is just as hard on a person as smoking, especially someone that drinks more than a drink or two a day.

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Bacardi or Brown-Forman (owner of Jack Daniels whiskey) or Constellation Brands (another American drinks group), would each find it hard to raise the money.

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It begins with the sugarcane pulp, which is processed into various forms: from the liquid sugar used to make soft drinks, to the more syrupy sugar used to make hard candy, VHP sugar for exportation, refined and granulated sugar.

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Not many years ago hard liquor seemed destined to go the way of some now virtually extinct soft drinks such as Moxie.

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Hard to gauge, but consider how less appealing meal and retailer deals are when alcoholic drinks are excluded.

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