Yes, they would be mixing them. I think it would be an interesting mix for breakfast.
As you say, taurine is a substance that occurs in the food we eat, so you will find it in meat products like beef and chicken. You will find it in larger quantities in seafood. It is what nutritionists call a non-essential amino acid. It is also a substance found in the human body. A person weighting 60 to 70 kilograms will have about 60 to 70 grams of taurine in their body, so this is not a substance that is new to the organism or to the diet.
I may take the opportunity to shed light on a question Mrs. Duncan asked about safe levels of taurine. This is what the European Food Safety Authority looked at in the 2009 opinion. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the safety assessment of energy drinks in Europe has a 10-year history. The European Food Safety Authority asked several questions and asked for studies, which were provided, so they could come up with a final conclusion.
For taurine they established what is called a “no observed adverse effect level” of 1,000 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day. They said that this was respectively 120-fold higher than the estimated mean and 43-fold higher than the estimated 95th percentile exposure to taurine from energy drinks when calculated for a 60-kilogram person.
If I do a rough calculation and divide this by two, you may be in the area of children, so you have a factor of 60, or about 21 respectively, when you look at the very high uses. But of course we do not expect children to be high users of energy drinks, so this is just hypothetically for consideration.