You probably start your morning with some coffee to get your brain online. Classic choice. But for many of us, that buzz lasts only so long.

When your energy begins to flag, you could pull some caffeinated trail mix out of your desk drawer as a midmorning snack. Come lunchtime, to make sure you’re really gleaning every possible benefit from your meals, you could add some caffeinated beef jerky. And then, when your focus inevitably lags in the afternoon, you could munch on caffeinated gummy bears or some bite-sized chocolate with, you guessed it, caffeine. 

Caffeine, long the most widely consumed psychoactive drug on the planet, is finding its way into a bevy of unexpected foods and drinks. This caffeine creep is part of a larger, decade-plus trend towards functional foods and drinks (hello proteinmaxxing and fibermaxxing).

Liz Moskow, food futurist and principal of the food consultancy Bread & Circus, characterizes the pivot towards functional foods and drinks as part of “the optimization of everything.” It isn’t enough to just enjoy eating a piece of chocolate. That chocolate needs to improve gut health or memory or provide some other key benefit. 

“Enter caffeine,” Moscow says. “It’s a cheap additive. It boosts metabolism. It gives you that quick hit that you feel.”

People have been drinking coffee and tea for centuries, but the turbocharged caffeine of energy drinks is a product of modern life. Red Bull made it to the United States in 1997, followed by Monster five years later.

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