How much Caffeine is REALLY in Jolt gum?

Like most people in the tech community, I consider caffeine to be my friend. It helps me slog through my morning a little faster, and begin to think clearly hours before I would normally. Sometimes a beverage with caffeine just isn’t handy, or maybe not readily available. Gum is almost always handy, and quite portable, so I decided to take a deeper look at Jolt Gum (which I blame completely on a random surf through ThinkGeek).

If you look at the web site for Jolt Gum, you will see the same statement that is on every package, “2 pcs of Jolt Gum = 1 Cup of Coffee.” Well, after trying it, I wondered, did they mean Instant Coffee? I mean, I’m a coffee drinker…and 2 pieces of Jolt certainly doesn’t, well, give me any kind of a “Jolt.” I had remembered seeing a Caffeine count on ThinkGeek stating “each piece of gum is approximately 45 milligrams of caffeine!” and I LIKE ThinkGeek – they’re cool over there, so I wanted to trust them – but I couldn’t take their site as the full authority. I mean, a cup of coffee is often described as having approximately 45 milligrams of caffeine, so perhaps they were just rewording what is already stated on the package of Jolt Gum.

Unfortunately, according to Energy Fiend, Jolt Gum only contains 12.7 milligrams in each piece. That’s very interesting, considering you can order a Grande Decaf of the Week from Starbucks and receive almost the exact same amount of Caffeine as in TWO pieces of Jolt Gum. Yes, a Starbucks Grande is 16oz, and their decaf of the week contains 25 milligrams of caffeine.

Not to rain on your parade, but if you are a fan of Penguin Mints, they too pull the same claim and fall short. They claim that “3 Penguins are the caffeine equivalent of 1 cola beverage,” yet Energy Fiend again shows us the light and states that each mint only has 7 milligrams of caffeine. If you want to call Coke Classic a “cola” you would be looking at 34 milligrams of caffeine in a typical 12 ounce can. Honestly, you could just simply have a 6 oz. Dannon Coffee Yogurt and surpass them all with a whopping 36 milligrams of caffeine.

Now, if you really want to have some fun, you can see how much caffeine it would take to kill you – just pick your poison. Apparently, it would take more than 534 pieces of Jolt Gum to kill me by way of caffeine, and that’s just way too much chewing.

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