REVIEWS

FOOD

LAZY CAKES

ERIC BOEHM

Lazy Cakes brownies promised “baked in” relaxation, thanks to a dose of melatonin. But they’d only been on store shelves for a few months in the early 2010s before becoming the subject of a moral panic about sleep-inducing baked goods.

“The inclusion of melatonin in baked goods raises numerous health concerns,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) wrote to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May 2011, asking the federal agency to launch an investigation because the “sweet, chocolaty taste may encourage consumers to eat well over a recommended quantity of melatonin.”

Melatonin is widely and legally sold as a dietary supplement and natural sleep aid, and it has become more mainstream in the years since Lazy Cakes debuted. A single Lazy Cake contained about eight milligrams of melatonin; today, you can find 10-milligram melatonin pills almost anywhere health supplements are sold. Nevertheless, the FDA concluded that melatonin and brownies, though