Can snacks help you sleep?

Can snacks help you sleep? 8 minutes ago Share Save MaryLou Costa Technology Reporter Share Save Mushroom-infused chocolate brand Alice Mushrooms has built a cult following since it launched three years ago. Its original chocolate product, Nightcap, is now available in 2,000 stores across the US, and boasts a list of ingredients that claim to help improve your sleep quality. Developed by Alice Mushrooms co-founders Charlotte Cruze and Lindsay Goodstein, Nightcap features reishi mushrooms and chamomile, known for their calming effects; plus magnesium and zinc, which are said to increase the body's natural levels of melatonin, a hormone which triggers sleepiness. It also includes L-theanine, an amino acid that naturally occurs in green tea, which is also understood to have a relaxing effect on the body to aid sleep. "We probably took the longest time to formulate our sleep chocolate, of any of our products, because sleep is so tough. There's a million different reasons that people can struggle with sleep," says New York City-based Cruze. "We worked with homeopathic doctors, PhD researchers and professional product formulators, to get something that could help with every part of the sleep cycle that could be getting disrupted." Cruze and Goodstein's growing business is playing into the rising demand for products promising better sleep. Some 47% of 1,003 Americans surveyed by mattress company Sleepopolis currently take a sleep aid, with natural supplements like melatonin proving the most popular, in favour of prescription and over the counter medications. Meanwhile in the UK, pharmaceutical products remain the largest sleep aid category, but natural remedies is the fastest growing segment. The US and UK also both ranked in the bottom 10 for countries with good "sleep scores", as analysed in IKEA's 2025 Sleep Report . Sleep enhancing snack foods like Alice Mushrooms' Nightcap chocolate are part of a new category of products that combine the wellness claims of health supp...