"Public health advocates and some mayors are sounding the alarm over Lazy Cakes, a brownie adorned with a lackadaisical cartoon character and laced with a powerful sleep aid that has sold millions nationwide.
“Children are attracted to brownies,” said Dr. Caroline Apovian, director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to put herbal things that are actually drugs in brownies or food items that are attractive to children. I think that’s heinous.”
One Lazy Cake, which is wrapped in plastic with a photo of a smiling cartoon brownie, contains 8 mg of melatonin, a sleep-inducing supplement not regulated by the federal government. Apovian said 10 mg of melatonin would cause an adult to abruptly fall asleep."
Alarm? Heinous?To see the breathless coverage and comments from Nannystaters you would think that the FDA was racing to head off some terrorist plot. The contraband in question is lazycake brownie advertised as having "relaxation baked in". I mean they are brownies for goodness sakes, not ground turkey or Avastin...
Of course, all it took was one stupid grown up to spoil snack time for America's youth:
"Earlier this year, a 2-year-old Tennessee boy was hospitalized after a relative gave him a portion of a Lazy Cake, according to news reports."
The brownies have about 10 mg of melatonin in them. Melatonin pills have about 3 mg of the stuff. Apart from the toddler from Tenn this is no evidence that the the brownies harming kids or turning them into zombies. And it's not as if the Lazycake guys are the first to make something quasi-therapeutic taste good too: Flinstone vitamins anyone? Or how about fruit flavored zinc lozenges? Maybe we should ban making any medicine flavorful because that would make them "attractive".
I am trying to figure out what alarm is... Maybe some people believe that if you market brownies laced with melatonin and stress how relaxed they make you feel and well, the next thing you know they'll be selling Chips Ahoy cookies with Valerian root will become the next gateway snack.
Apparently the FDA will demand changes in the labeling and marketing of the product or else.. Maybe they should require Lazycake to be stored behind retail counters like cough medicines and the morning after pill. Oh wait, that's a serious proposal under consideration. So too, I bet, is a lawsuit sometime soon.
Maybe everyone should just.... chill. But not with a brownie. Unless there's some perspective and common sense baked into them.
