Institute For The Future

Where is My Caffeinated Yogurt?

I'm not sure what it says about my eating habits that this weekend, my Mom took it upon herself to give me a caffeinated cookie from a local bakery. But having that cookie presented a bit of a problem: I didn't have any huge desire to have a cookie for breakfast; on the other hand, I didn't have much of a desire to consume a bunch of caffeine in the afternoon or evening, when I might want dessert. Which got me thinking: Are there caffeinated breakfast foods?

 

 

The answer, it turns out, is sort of. Think Geek, home to all manner of unusual food products, offers a breakfast cereal called "Spazztroids," which describes itself as "the only cereal loaded with vitamins, a hyper-sweetener, and loads and loads of caffeine!" I also managed to dig up this list from a site called Regretful Morning of unusual caffeinated items including oatmeal, as well as less breakfast appropriate foods, such as potato chips and beer. The oatmeal--Morning Spark Natural Energy Oatmeal--is the closest thing to what I was looking for: It advertises itself as "an excellent source of fiber...[and] energy" and appears to be a quick, but healthy breakfast that someone could manage to eat in a few minutes before heading off to work.

 

And that contrast--between potato chips, beer, or cookies, on the one hand and yogurt or cereal, on the other--hints at a larger point. The market for functional foods, which are foods that offer some immediate boost in mood or function, is projected to grow as much as 20 percent per year in the United States for the next several years. And I think a lot of that growth, if it does actually materialize, will come from developing context appropriate foods, such as caffeinated cereals, yogurt and so on, where the functional benefit--the breakfast that wakes you up!--feels like a nicely integrated part of a unified product.