The news has lately been reporting that caffeine is now being added to all sorts of things from gum to potato chips to candy. Hmm…well, I’m a bit of a caffeine addict myself but honestly, I’ve always gone to the standard beverages that contain it naturally. It would never occur to me to purchase caffeinated potato chips or gum.
That said - where does the caffeine for these products come from? Is that where all the caffeine they remove from decaff coffee and tea goes? How is it added to the gum-candy-chips-whatever products?
My university’s caffeine-purification plant was a pretty important source of income when I was there. They’d buy it from decaf makers and purify it until it was good enough to add to food or to pharmaceutical compounds. We used to joke that we ought’a drink only sodas from the school’s clients, since what the heck, their business assisted our tuition. It started as a yellowish powder (a description which fits over 90% of raw, impure chemical compounds) and finished as shiny-white tiny crystals.
Maybe they do, but I doubt that that is where most of it comes from. Surely the market for decaf coffee is tiny compared to that for caffeinated soft drinks (not to mention other caffeinated products): it is not just Mountain Dew, it is also Coca Cola and other colas, and all those “energy drinks”.