Taurine Supplement

Taurine is an amino sulfonic acid found throughout the human body, concentrated in the heart, brain, retina and muscle. Your body makes some of it, and you get the rest from food, mostly fish, shellfish and meat. Supplements typically supply between 500mg and 2000mg. It is in nearly every energy drink on the shelf, and almost nobody who drinks one can tell you why.

So let's answer that, along with the question everybody actually types into Google about taurine, which we'll come to shortly and which is not true.

What taurine actually is

People call taurine an amino acid. Strictly, it isn't one. Amino acids are the building blocks your body uses to make proteins, and taurine is never used that way. It contains sulfur rather than the carboxyl group that defines a true amino acid, which makes it an amino sulfonic acid. A cousin, not a sibling.

It's classed as conditionally essential. Your body synthesises taurine from cysteine, so in normal circumstances you are not dependent on getting it from food. Under some conditions, that synthesis may not keep up.

Dietary taurine comes almost entirely from animal sources. Scallops, mussels, tuna, dark poultry meat. Plant foods contain very little. Which means that if you eat no animal products, your dietary intake is close to zero and you are relying on what your body makes. That is not a health warning. It is simply a fact that most people who go vegan have never been told, and it explains why taurine turns up in vegan supplement formulas more often than you might expect.

Why it is in every energy drink

Here is the honest answer, which is not the one on most product pages.

Taurine ended up in energy drinks in the 1980s and it has stayed there largely because it was already there. The category copied itself. The theory that taurine and caffeine work better together than either alone is popular, plausible, and not well established. Some studies suggest an interaction. Others don't. The research that exists is mostly on combination products, which makes it very difficult to say what any single ingredient contributed.

We include 400mg because that is a real dose rather than a token one, and because we would rather use an ingredient properly or not at all. We are not going to tell you it multiplies the caffeine. Nobody has shown that convincingly, and pretending otherwise would undercut every other word on this site.

Is it really made from bull semen?

No. This is the most persistent myth in the supplement world and it deserves killing properly.

The name comes from the Latin taurus, meaning bull, because taurine was first isolated from ox bile in 1827 by two German chemists. Bile. Not semen. And that was two hundred years ago.

Taurine used in food and supplements today is manufactured synthetically. It has to be, at the volumes the industry uses, and synthetic taurine is chemically identical to the taurine in your own tissue. It's also the reason taurine supplements can be vegan, which surprises people who have heard the myth.

So: not from bulls, not from any animal, and the confusion is entirely down to an unfortunate choice of name by a chemist in 1827.

The label test

Take this column, open any other taurine supplement you're considering, and see how many rows you can fill in from their label.

What taurine does, and what we are not allowed to tell you

Search for taurine and you'll find pages claiming it supports heart health, athletic performance, mental performance, eyesight, longevity. Some of that rests on real research. None of it rests on research the European Commission has accepted.

In the EU, a food supplement may only make a health claim if that exact claim has been authorised under Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006.

Taurine has no authorised health claims. Not one. So we cannot tell you what it does for you, and neither can any other brand selling into the EU. When you see one doing it anyway, you have learned something useful about that brand.

The same is true of caffeine, whose alertness claims were assessed and rejected, and of guarana, which sits in the unresolved botanical backlog.

Vitamin C is the exception, and the reason it's in our formula. It contributes to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, and to normal energy-yielding metabolism. Those are authorised words, and they're the only benefit language you will find on this site.

Aurora Flow Energy Complex, in full

Questions people actually ask

What is taurine?

An amino sulfonic acid found throughout the body, with the highest concentrations in the heart, brain, retina and muscle. The body synthesises some of it from cysteine, and the rest comes from food, mostly fish, shellfish and meat.

Is taurine made from bull semen?

No. It was first isolated from ox bile in 1827, and named after the Latin taurus. Taurine used in supplements today is manufactured synthetically and is chemically identical to the taurine in your own body. It's also why taurine supplements can be vegan.

Is taurine vegan?

The taurine is, because it's synthetic. Whether the product is depends on the capsule shell. Gelatin shells are made from animal collagen. Aurora Flow uses pullulan, which is plant-derived.

What does taurine do?

We're not permitted to answer that in the way you want. No health claims for taurine have been authorised in the EU, which means no brand selling here may tell you what benefit it delivers. What we can tell you is what it is, how much is in the product, and that we're not going to invent the rest.

How much taurine should I take?

Supplements typically range from 500mg to 2000mg. Aurora Flow contains 400mg per daily dose, alongside the rest of the formula. There is no EU recommended intake for taurine, because it isn't an essential nutrient.

Do taurine and caffeine work together?

It's a popular claim and a plausible one, but the evidence is thinner than the marketing suggests. Most of the research is on combination drinks, which makes it hard to isolate what any single ingredient contributed. We've written about it in taurine and caffeine, honestly, including the parts that don't flatter us.

Is taurine safe?

EFSA has assessed taurine at the levels typically found in energy drinks and did not identify a safety concern for healthy adults. As with anything, the dose is what matters, and the rest of the formula matters too. Ours carries 180mg of caffeine per daily dose, which is the ingredient worth watching.

Related reading

• Energy supplements, explained: how to read any label
• Caffeine capsules: dose ranges and the EFSA reference intakes
• Taurine and caffeine: what the evidence actually shows
• How much caffeine is too much? The EFSA reference intakes
• Aurora Flow Energy Complex: 60 capsules, four ingredients, every dose disclosed