Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
With an energy drink name as hugely popular as Monster, it should come as no surprise that the company would branch off into other types of beverages. That’s how the Juice Monster line was born, which includes a fruity flavor called Mango Loco Monster. If you’re about to crack open a can of this tropical-tasting juice, is it vegan?
Mango Loco Monster should be vegan-safe. The L-carnitine in the beverage is plant-based, as is the case with other Monster drinks. The colors appear to be sourced from carotene rather than artificial colors that are usually tested on animals.
In this post, we’ll introduce you to Mango Loco Monster if you’re unfamiliar with it, including all its ingredients. Then we’ll take an even closer look at those ingredients, going over the questionable ones to deduce whether they’re vegan. We’ll also discuss the health implications of drinking Mango Loco Monster, so you won’t want to miss it!
What Is Mango Loco Monster?
Monster is an energy drink brand that produces an assortment of other beverages as well. There’s Muscle Monster (an energy shake), Monster Dragon Tea, Monster Maxx for exercise, Monster Rehab, Java Monster (the coffee beverage), and Juice Monster.
According to Monster themselves, Juice Monster is part juice, part energy drink. There are five flavors in the Juice Monster line: Papillon, Khaotic, Pipeline Punch, Pacific Punch, and Mango Logo with a juicy mango flavor.
Monster was inspired by the Mexican holiday of Dia de Los Muertos or Day of the Dead when creating Mango Loco Monster. That’s why you see colorful skulls emblazoned all over the teal blue can.
Mango Loco Monster Nutrition Facts
Like other Monster beverages, Mango Loco Monster is only available in large 8-fluid-ounce cans, which is 240 milliliters of juice. Per that serving, here is the nutrition information for Mango Loco Monster:
- 110 calories
- 0 grams of total fat
- 35 milligrams of sodium (1 percent of your daily recommended value)
- 29 grams of carbohydrates (10 percent of your daily recommended value)
- 28 grams of sugar
- 0 grams of protein
- 200 percent vitamin B12
- 200 percent vitamin B2 (riboflavin)
- 200 percent vitamin B6
- 200 percent vitamin B3 (niacin)
The nutritional profile of Mango Loco Monster isn’t all that different from the original Monster. That classic energy drink contains 113 calories per 8 fluid ounces. Original Monster also has 185 milligrams of sodium, 27 grams of carbs, and 26 grams of sugar.
Is Mango Loco Monster Vegan? A Closer Look at Its Ingredients
Those nutrition facts aren’t really anything to write home about, nor do they tell you whether Mango Loco Monster is vegan. To answer that, we need to investigate the ingredients in this juice.
First, we’ll list those ingredients. Then, as we said we would, we’ll go over some of the more confusing ingredients to confirm whether Mango Loco Monster is vegan-friendly.
- Maltodextrin
- Sodium chloride or salt
- Modified starch
- Vegetable oils, including rapeseed and coconut oils
- Coloring
- Inositol, up to 0.002 percent
- L-tartrate from L-carnitine, up to 0.004 percent
- Sucralose sweetener
- Stabilizers, including sodium alginate and xanthan gum
- Vitamins B2 through B12
- Caffeine
- Preservatives, including sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate
- Flavorings
- Acidity regulators such as sodium citrate and potassium citrate
- Citric acid
- Glucose syrup
- Sucrose
- Concentrated fruit juices (up to 15 percent): passionfruit, lemon, peach, orange, apricot, pineapple, apple, white grape, mango, and guava
- Carbonated water
Maltodextrin
The first ingredient on the list, maltodextrin, is a type of starch powder that can boost a food’s shelf life as well as its thickness and flavor. Many soft drinks contain maltodextrin, as do candies, pastries, and packaged foods.
Maltodextrin is gluten-free and made from plant sources, so it’s allowable on a vegan diet.
Coloring
If you read our eBook on animal byproducts, then you now know that most food coloring is anything but vegan. In case you missed that book (it’s worth going back and checking it out), before food coloring is sold to consumers, it’s tested on animals. This isn’t only laboratory testing with mice, but common pets like rabbits and dogs too.
Animals have died during these studies and will continue to until more of the world eschews these food colorings. Insects often have to die too, especially cochineal. That insect is crushed to produce ruby red coloring that’s used in countless foods.
Food coloring is also a bad idea from a health perspective, as Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 3, and Red 40 may be carcinogenic. That’s why Monster uses carotene to give Mango Loco Monster its color. Carotene is a pigment from plants that’s red or orange.
Inositol
What in the world is inositol? We could have lumped it into the sweeteners section, as it’s a type of sugar that’s carbocyclic in nature. Often referred to as myo-inositol, inositol can be used in many ways. It’s effective in reducing mood disorder and metabolic disorder symptoms, and it’s a natural ingredient in a variety of foods.
These foods include:
- Wheat bran
- Sesame seeds
- Corn
- Brown rice
- Beans
- Citrus fruits
- Cantaloupe
Hormonally, you might not want to ingest inositol, but there’s nothing un-vegan about it.
L-Carnitine
That usually can’t be said about L-carnitine, a chemical that converts fat to energy. In other words, it’s one of the ingredients besides caffeine in energy drinks that pumps you up and gets you through your day.
Like inositol, L-carnitine is naturally-occurring in all sorts of foods, including poultry, red meat, fish, and milk. None of those foods are allowable on the vegan diet, especially red meat, which has the highest levels of L-carnitine of all.
We wrote about Juice Monster in this post on our blog about which energy drinks are vegan. In that article, we mentioned a statement Monster has made about its sources of L-carnitine, which the brand says are plant-based.
That’s the case with all other beverages sold by Monster Energy as well, including Mango Loco Monster.
Sweeteners
A whole handful of sweeteners make Mango Loco Monster sticky-sweet. They include sucralose, fruit juice, glucose syrup, and sucrose.
Sucralose is a calorie-free sweetener that’s likely added to keep the calories down in Mango Loco Monster. It should be vegan-safe. The fruit juices used in this Monster beverage, while sugary, are naturally-sourced too and thus vegan.
Glucose syrup or confectioner’s glucose comes from starch, so there’s no need to remove it from your vegan diet. The syrup allows foods to retain moisture while also thickening and sweetening them.
Sucrose is table sugar, and it’s a questionable sweetener in Mango Loco Monster. To get that pure white hue that so many people associate with sugar, sometimes bone char is used to brighten the often-darker sugar. This bone char comes from animals, typically cattle.
We’re not totally sure if Mango Loco Monster sucralose has bone char. It appears it doesn’t, but there’s no official statement on that.
Preservatives
Mango Loco Monster features two preservatives, potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate. Potassium sorbate has no flavor nor taste but features a white, powder-like texture. It’s considered vegan. As for sodium benzoate, this is often used for pickling food, making it a somewhat strange ingredient to find in an energy juice. Even still, it’s vegan.
Flavorings
The flavorings on the ingredients label of Mango Loco Monster are not specified. They could be the fruit juices we talked about earlier, but without further information, it’s hard to say. We still don’t necessarily think this makes Mango Loco Monster unsafe for vegans, but this is certainly an iffy ingredient that needs more clarification.
Is Mango Loco Monster Healthy? Should You Drink It?
The review of the above ingredients proved that Mango Loco Monster should be considered vegan. Even still, is drinking this beverage the wisest decision? We’d say no, and for several reasons.
For one, even though Mango Loco Monster is moderately low in calories, that’s not the case for the carb and sugar content. With nearly 30 grams each of carbs and sugar, you’re ingesting quite a lot in every can.
The nutrition facts state that the carbs in Mango Loco Monster are only 10 percent of your recommended limit, but 30 grams of sugar is already your daily allotment of the sweet stuff. You’d have to go the whole rest of the day avoiding sugar, which is not easy to do when sugar is in even savory foods.
Outside of the heavy loads of carbs and sugar is all that caffeine. According to Monster’s website, each can of Mango Loco Monster contains 76 milligrams of caffeine per serving, which is 152 milligrams in the entire can.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration or FDA recommends capping your caffeine consumption at 400 milligrams. You’re nearly halfway there with only one can of Mango Loco Monster!
Limiting yourself to drinking only one can is harder than you may think. It’s easy to get hooked on caffeine, especially the temporary rise in alertness, focus, and energy you feel. However, those effects are very short-lived, lasting about an hour if you’re lucky. Within several hours, you begin to crash.
Yet even long after you feel caffeine’s effects, the stimulant lingers in your body. After six hours, caffeine has reached its half-life, meaning it takes 12 full hours for it to pass through your system. This may be the time that your caffeine withdrawal symptoms kick in, including moodiness and headache. If you’ve made it this far without another can of Mango Loco Monster or some other Monster energy drink, you’ll feel inclined to crack one open now.
All this doesn’t mean you should avoid caffeine, but do be aware of what it does to your body. If you need a bit of a kick to get started with your day, you’re much better off drinking a beverage with much less caffeine. Tea, for instance, contains 26 milligrams of caffeine in 8 fluid ounces or 238 grams. That’s more than 100 milligrams of caffeine fewer than in Mango Loco Monster!
Conclusion
Mango Loco Monster is regarded as vegan, although no one can say for sure where the juice’s flavorings come from or if the sugar used is whitened with bone char.
Since you’re likely following a vegan diet for a healthier lifestyle, you’re much better off skipping all Monster energy drinks, even if they’re okay per your diet. Your body will thank you!