Call them cognitive cocktails.
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Though they don`t contain alcohol, they are loaded with nutrients, herbs and vitamins designed to deliver enhanced cerebral performance.
And the ”smart” beverages, along with tablet and capsule counterparts, are being gulped down by enough Americans to generate annual sales of more than $30 million, according to a report in Details magazine.
Manufacturers claim that the power potions, marketed under names such as Blast, Power Maker, Activitea and Gourmet Choline Cooler, stimulate the brain to work at peak form.
For example, products containing choline and/or ginkgo, are said to improve memory, says Bob Lee, owner of a Chicago General Nutrition Center franchise, who reports that brain-food customers include seniors, students and ”middle-age people who have to use a lot of recall on the job.”
Other concoctions can ”increase your serial acquisition of knowledge,”
says Will Block, director of research and development at Life Services Supplements Inc., which makes Blast, a liquid brain booster.
The products definitely remain outside mainstream medical boundaries-the FDA refuses to classify them as drugs, so manufacturers cannot make health claims on labels.
Yet a publishing firm manager tells Details that the elixirs have
”dynamized my intellectual and emotional acuity” so dramatically that her employer now subsidizes her $360 annual drink tab.