Sleep friendly late-night snacks – The Wall Street Journal

JOHANNESBURG — The usual time between eating and sleeping, as prescribed by dieticians, is two to three hours, which may be longer depending on the digestibility of the food eaten. So while late night snacking is not prescribed, there is a small but growing movement in the United States of products marketed explicitly for pre-bedtime eating. And while Good Day Chocolate and Nightfood aren't on South African shopper lists yet, this type of food category may already be on many lips. – Stuart Lowman.A late-night snack to help you snooze?By Anne Marie Chaker ___STEADY_PAYWALL___.(The Wall Street Journal) Victor Capo just spent $200 on 35 pints of ice cream that he thinks help him sleep. "I top my day off with this, brush my teeth, and I'm done," he says.Mr. Capo, a 37-year-old technical writer in Miami, ordered a brand called Nightfood. With ingredients such as magnesium and glycine that the brand calls "sleep friendly," the ice cream touts itself as "sleep expert and crave monster approved." Many people consume ice cream at night anyway, says brand founder Sean Folkson, and are looking for an option that won't hurt their sleep.It's part of a small but growing number of products marketed explicitly for pre-bedtime snacking. While conventional wisdom has long held that chowing down too close to bedtime can disrupt sleep, these products are positioning themselves as better-for-you options, with some going further to suggest they can even help you get a better night's rest.Also read: Chad le Clos: snacking habits that make him a winnerNightfood's website features sleep and nutrition experts, and says the product has "removed/minimised stuff that's in most other ice creams that can be sleep disruptive," such as sugar and fat. Coming in flavours such as Cookies and Dreams and After Dinner Mint Chip, its $5 containers are priced comparably to other low-calorie ice creams such as Enlightened, Halo Top, and Scandal-less, as well as Ben & Jerry's, which ranged in price from $4.99 to $5.69 at Safeway in Silver Spring, Md. It's available online and in more than 200 stores in 16 states after a February launch. "It was one of those late night orders from the darkness of my bedroom when nobody's looking," says Mr. Capo of his 35-pint splurge..Nestlé is testing a rollout of a new chocolate called Goodnight whose packaging bills it as a "bedtime snack": "Enjoy a full serving of three delicately delicious Goodnight pieces 30-45 minutes before you'd like to drift off to dreamland." It's available on Amazon now, and the company expects to launch it on store shelves in some US markets by fall.Some Sleep drinks contain melatonin, an ingredient in over-the-counter sleep aids, alongside other ingredients such as Vitamin B6 and magnesium. Cans say to "drink 30 minutes before you are ready to sleep." Good Day chocolates contain 1 milligram of melatonin; a panel on the box offers a 1 to 4 chocolate dosing scale, from one candy ("maybe enough?") to four chocolates ("out like a light").The products attempt to tap two consumer trends: the increasing move toward snacking rather than meals, and a frustration with poor sleep, marketing analysts say. Forty percent of consumers said they snacked in the late evening hours, according to Chicago market-research firm IRI's Snacking Survey of 1,025 consumers performed in February, up from 24% in 2010. "Sleep-friendly" foods aren't yet a big enough category to be tracked.Michael Harris, a 39-year-old financial investor in Wichita, Kan., typically has a Som Sleep drink about 30 minutes before bedtime, about three times a week. Sometimes he even packs it in his luggage before traveling. "It helps the quality of my sleep, and the depth," he says. While he says he is generally averse to taking supplements, a cold drink seems more enticing. "It's a preferential delivery method," he says..Doctors say there is truth in the common belief that eating too close to bedtime can harm the quality of your sleep. Certain fatty foods and big, heavy meals can take longer to digest, disrupting sleep, says Alon Avidan, director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Centre. Sugars and chocolate, he adds, can cause a spike in energy.Research on the ingredients that are often touted as sleep helpers is mixed. Melatonin, for instance, is a hormone that suppresses an alerting function in our brains that can make us wake up, says Dr. Avidan. He says while a doctor may recommend it in particular cases related to sleep abnormalities, most people don't need to take more of it. "If you don't have a sleep problem, you don't need to take melatonin," says Dr. Avidan.Other purported sleep aids include magnesium and glycine, but studies have generally been small or inconclusive, says Mark Moyad, a director of complementary and alternative medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Centre. For instance, he says magnesium is often touted as a treatment for nocturnal leg cramps. But a 2014 review of seven studies concluded that it doesn't generally appear to be effective in treatment.Makers of bedtime snack products say that they welcome more research, but that many consumers already find the products helpful. "We've seen very positive effects from consumers," says Abdul Khan, founder of Som Sleep.Roughly one-third of the adult population gets less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. But food companies say that many people are reluctant to swallow a pill for sleep: Only 18% of troubled sleepers – defined as adults who have trouble sleeping at least once a week – said an over-the-counter sleep aid was their preferred way of dealing with sleep problems, according to a survey of 1,668 troubled sleepers from Packaged Facts."There's a huge white space," says Doug Munk, a director of new business ventures at Nestlé SA. "Most of the solutions you see in store are supplements or medicine. Food as medicine is the trend we see."A serving of Nestlé's Goodnight chocolates contains 70 milligrams of magnesium and 5 milligrams of casein protein, a slowly digested protein. Instructions say to "enjoy a full serving of three delicately delicious Goodnight pieces 30-45 minutes before you'd like to drift off to dreamland." Social-media marketing has focused on segments including "worriers" (new parents, those with new jobs) and "sleep enthusiasts."Food companies toe a line in communicating benefits. A Food and Drug Administration spokesman declined to comment on a specific company's marketing claims but said: "As a general rule we require food labelling to be truthful and not misleading and consider product labelling on a case-by-case basis."Read also: Battling to sleep? Pay up – or tap into some Socratic wisdomNightfood's website notes: "Nightfood does not contain sleep-aid substances or drugs, and it's not a dietary supplement." It adds that it is not suggesting that people eat ice cream as a sleep aid.Instead, pint covers instruct consumers to "turn on TV, grab spoon, do your thing, sweet dreams!" Consumers say they link that to a better night's sleep. "For an entire week, every night I ate a pint of ice cream," says Mr. Capo, "and I went to sleep like it was nothing."Write to Anne Marie Chaker at anne-marie.chaker@wsj.com

Sleep friendly late-night snacks – The Wall Street Journal

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