I’ve seen a lot of fundamentally flawed ideas go by on the food newswires over my almost 15 years of hosting the Fab Food Blog. But this ‘inspiration- may be the worst supplement idea yet. Even if it does serve the lately-ascended God of Newstalgia and the fad of Energy Everything…
How do I loathe thee? Don’t get me started counting the ways! I tried to visualize the ‘test kitchen’ product development team that came up with the latest would-be trend (barely a fad, really) to be called a ‘food item…
I see a group of guys and gals – most young but one or two ‘Boomer-ish’ – standing around a stain-less steel pro-kitchen workstation, grinning wide-eyed while dipping big pinches of… Caffeine?
That may or may not have been the exact scenario the developers of Wip ‘natural’ caffeine ‘supple-ment’ had in mind when the inspiration for the product first stuck them. But it’s what I get when I try to tune their signal more clearly.
What it is…
Wip is unmistakably a modern take on the ancient Chewing Tobacco model. It even leverages, shame-lessly, the traditional flat tin package anyone familiar with the proverbial ‘chaw’ will injstantly recog-nise.
The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that, instead of a pocket-pack of loose caffeine powder, the tin is a convenient carrier for little 200 mg sachets of ‘instant energy’.
To put that in perspective with other,more familiar forms of caffeine infusion… A regular cup of coffee will average around 60 – 80 mg, a really strong cop of joe might hit twice that dosage. As the strong-est cup of conventional coffee (more like two strong cups) might hit the 200mg mark. single serving containers of popular energy drinks range from about 80 mg to about 180 mg of caffeine, depending on the brand and the container size.
A few of the more powerful energy drinks – often advertised as ‘charged’ – will approach the 400 mg. mark. But at least one pf those – Panera’s ‘charged’ lemonade – was removed from the market last year after several customers (with pre-existing conditions incompatible with high doses of stimulants such as caffeine) died after overdosing on free refills.
My issues
I have several bones to pick with stimulants such as caffeine – even if they are ‘natural’. In the case of confections, caffeinated fizzy drinks and other such preparations, the caffeine used is often the by-product of the mainstream production process for defcaffienated coffee. Going out of my way to eat someone else’s ‘garbage’ has never appealed – or made sense – to me.
My first thought when I saw the Wip tin was of my long-gone paternal grandfather. He ‘stepped out’ for a chaw of actual old-school chewing tobacco – which called snuff – after supper almost every night. It became a point of pride for him to recount to horrified newcomers to the extended family – especially children – how he soaked his dentures in Chlorox bleach every night to get the stains out of them. Even though he dosed himself heavily with nicotine via snuff, he managed to avoid the greater evils of smoking by ‘dipping the tin’. And he was very discreet, never losing any deep-brown, odious-smelling saliva down his shirt front.
Much later in my own life, I was similarly horrified then a colleague at the radio station where I as working at the time announced he was quitting smoking (Kudos!). But it turned out he was planning to switch out combustibles in favour of comestibles, paying homage to the stars of his fave pro spot: Baseball. Yes, he was a sports reporter. And it was just a couple of months before his dentist warned him that the mysterious white spots that had appeared on his gums, courtesy of snuff, were ‘pre-cancerous’. End of story.
Inherent dangers…
I also see an inherent danger in the Wip being served as a powder. You’re not supposed to smoke it or sniff it. But some folks will probably try to. And that might be a recipe for deadly side effects!
I can also envision little kids, getting into it when adults are not around, mistaking it for a candy treat of some sort. That sort of misadventure would surely have consequences much worse than adult ab-use or misadventure might engender…
And it’s just a bad idea to have stuff like this anywhere kids could get their hands on it. Some phys-icians and public health advocates are already warning that the use of conventional energy drinks by kids and teens has reached epidemic status.
My take
There’s yet another danger I foresee in products like Wip: It seems to be another metaphor for cigar-ettes and other conventional tobacco products: A product poised to take the place of demonized vaping. Wip is advertised as a ‘cleaner’ form of instant energy, without excess sugar or other un-wanted ingredients such as artificial flavours or colourings.
In the end. all that means is, Wip will get folks hooked on an addictive substance without all the muss and fuss smoking entails. Or the litter and unwanted Calories associated with conventional fizzy pops and energy drinks in general.
Like I said of the top of this post: I look at Wip and I see the worst of two eras – not some ‘new’ development to be celebrated…
~ Maggie J.