WASHINGTON – From potato chips to sunflower seeds to beef jerky, adding caffeine to food products has been giving consumers an extra boost of energy for several years now, a CPG trend recognized by anyone who’s taken a trip around the NACS Show expo. 

Adding to the caffeinated product list is peanut butter, writes The Washington Post. What began as a conversation about the perfect sandwich to help combat a hangover turned into a product innovation by Chris Pettazzoni, Keith Barnofski and Andrew Brach, creators of Steem caffeinated peanut butter, the latest entry to the caffeinated food world that has some federal regulators feeling a bit jittery.

The news source writes that two tablespoons of Steem contains about 170 mg of caffeine, roughly the amount in two cups of coffee. Pettazzoni said Steem is intended to be a healthy time saver, a recipe that extracts caffeine from green coffee pods. He said that ideally people could skip their morning coffee and instead get their caffeine fix by spreading Steem on toast or fruit, or eating it straight from the jar.

"We are big proponents for taking it easy on caffeine," Pettazzoni told the news source. "Fundamentally, we're one of the safer methods [of caffeine intake]."

Pettazzoni and his partners are aware that the FDA is paying attention to the growth of caffeine-added food products, as well as potential health effects in children and adolescents who consume these foods. The Post writes the agency has said it planned to examine the need for new rules to regulate caffeine in food back in 2013.

“It’s a trend that raises real concerns,” Michael Taylor, the FDA’s top food safety official, told the Post two years ago, adding, “We’re not here to say that these products are inherently unsafe. We’re trying to understand, what are the right questions to be asking? ... When you start putting [caffeine] in these different products and forms, do we really understand the effects?”

Although the FDA has yet to take any action, speculation remains that the agency could eventually require detailed labeling for caffeine or seek to ban it from some food products.

But for now, Steem is enjoying success and maintaining transparency. "We're trying to go about this through the proper channels and are certainly not hiding anything we are doing," Pettazzoni told the news source.

A recent spate of publicity has the company “churning out caffeinated peanut butter as fast as it can,” more recently taking 450 orders in a single day. "It's been crazy, but in the best way," Pettazzoni said.