The History of Taurine: How It Became a Popular Supplement

Few supplement ingredients have travelled as far as taurine — from a curiosity in 19th-century German chemistry to a staple of energy drinks sold in every corner shop in Britain. Along the way it picked up myths, a famous misunderstanding about bulls and a recent wave of attention from ageing research. Our editorial team traces the story and checks what the evidence actually supports.

Discovery in ox bile

Taurine was first isolated in 1827 by the German scientists Friedrich Tiedemann and Leopold Gmelin, who extracted it from ox bile. The name comes from the Latin taurus, meaning bull — which is the origin of the enduring but false belief that energy drinks contain extracts from bulls.

Chemically, taurine is an unusual amino acid. It contains a sulphonic acid group instead of the carboxylic acid group found in typical amino acids, and it is not used to build proteins. Instead, it exists freely in tissues, particularly the heart, skeletal muscle, retina and brain.

For more than a century, taurine was regarded mainly as a component of bile acids, helping to emulsify dietary fats. Its wider biological importance only became clear much later.

Humans can synthesise taurine from the amino acids cysteine and methionine, and also obtain it from food — particularly meat, fish and seafood. Vegans have lower dietary intakes but generally maintain adequate levels through synthesis.

Cats, infants and the first clear role

The turning point came from veterinary science. In the 1970s, researchers discovered that cats fed taurine-deficient diets developed retinal degeneration and blindness. Unlike humans, cats have very limited capacity to make taurine.

A decade later, Pion and colleagues (1987) reported in Science that dilated cardiomyopathy in cats — a serious heart muscle disease — was associated with low taurine and could be reversed by supplementation. Pet food manufacturers changed their formulations, and taurine became firmly established as biologically important.

Attention then turned to human infants. Breast milk contains taurine, whereas early formula milks did not. Premature babies in particular have limited synthetic capacity, so taurine was added to infant formulas, a practice that is now widespread.

A major review by Huxtable (1992) summarised the growing list of taurine's functions: regulating cell volume, modulating calcium handling in muscle, acting as an antioxidant and supporting nervous system function. That broad profile made it attractive to the emerging functional-drinks industry.

The energy drink boom

Taurine's commercial breakthrough came with energy drinks. In 1987, an Austrian company launched a carbonated version of a Thai tonic drink, combining caffeine, sugar, B vitamins and taurine. The product spread across Europe and reached the UK in the 1990s, creating an entirely new drinks category.

Taurine's presence was partly marketing: it sounded scientific, had a memorable name and suggested something beyond caffeine. In reality, most of the immediate stimulant effect of energy drinks comes from caffeine and sugar.

Regulators took an interest. Some European countries initially restricted energy drinks containing taurine, but after reviews of safety data the restrictions were lifted. The European Food Safety Authority concluded in 2009 that exposure to taurine at the levels used in energy drinks was not a safety concern.

Concerns about energy drinks today centre on caffeine and sugar, particularly for children. In the UK, drinks with high caffeine content must carry warning labels, many retailers voluntarily refuse sales to under-16s, and the government has moved to make such a restriction law in England.

Taurine in sport: the evidence

With its roles in muscle calcium handling and antioxidant defence, taurine was a natural candidate for sports supplements. Muscle taurine levels can fall after very prolonged exercise, which further fuelled interest.

A meta-analysis by Waldron and colleagues (2018) found that taurine supplementation produced a small improvement in endurance performance, with a wide range of doses (around 1–6 g) and supplementation periods studied. The effect was modest and the number of studies small.

For practical purposes, taurine is a low-risk ingredient with a possible small benefit for endurance athletes. It is not a performance game-changer, and it is not on the WADA prohibited list.

New interest and current regulation

In 2023, taurine returned to the headlines when Singh and colleagues published a study in Science suggesting that taurine levels decline with age and that supplementation extended lifespan and improved health markers in mice and worms, with some supportive data in monkeys.

The findings were exciting but must be kept in perspective. Animal lifespan results frequently fail to translate to humans, and the human data in that study were observational. Large controlled trials in people are needed before any anti-ageing claims can be made.

• Taurine is permitted as an ingredient in foods and supplements in the UK and EU.
• No authorised health claim exists for taurine, so labels cannot legally promise specific benefits.
• Typical supplement servings are 1–3 g daily; energy drinks often contain around 1 g per can.
• People with kidney disease or on multiple medications should check with a doctor before supplementing.

The story of taurine is a useful example of how a genuine scientific discovery can be stretched by marketing — and how new research can revive interest decades later.

Conclusions of the editorial team

Taurine has a 200-year scientific history, with clear importance established first in cats and infants, before its commercial life in energy drinks.

For athletes, the evidence supports at most a small endurance benefit. Its popularity owes more to clever branding than to dramatic effects.

Recent ageing research is intriguing but remains preliminary, and claims of anti-ageing effects in humans are premature.

Related topics on our site include the effects of caffeine on performance, the safety of energy drinks for teenagers and the evidence for beta-alanine in endurance sport.

References

1. Huxtable RJ. Physiological actions of taurine. Physiol Rev. 1992;72(1):101–163.
2. Pion PD, Kittleson MD, Rogers QR, Morris JG. Myocardial failure in cats associated with low plasma taurine: a reversible cardiomyopathy. Science. 1987;237(4816):764–768.
3. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food. The use of taurine and D-glucurono-γ-lactone as constituents of the so-called "energy" drinks. EFSA J. 2009;7(4):935.
4. Waldron M, Patterson SD, Tallent J, Jeffries O. The effects of an oral taurine dose and supplementation period on endurance exercise performance in humans: a meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2018;48(5):1247–1253.
5. Singh P, Gollapalli K, Mangiola S, et al. Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging. Science. 2023;380(6649):eabn9257.