Apparently you can have your cake and your sleep too! A new, albeit controversial, alternative to prescription sleep aids is gaining traction, hitting its target on college campuses and available at many mainstream convenience stores.

Not everyone wants or needs a doctor’s prescription to battle insomnia or the occasional sleepless night. That’s where sleep-inducing desserts, containing melatonin, come in. All across the country, cakes and brownies with catchy names like Lazy Cakes, Kush Cakes, and LullaPies, are helping Americans get the rest they need. But are they safe to eat? 

The effective ingredient in these sweet treats is melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain from the amino acid tryptophan. The synthesis and release of melatonin are stimulated by darkness and suppressed by light, suggesting its role in the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle.

Synthetic melatonin supplements have been used for a variety of medical conditions, most notably in cases where the natural sleep cycle has been disturbed, such as with jet lag, delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), sleep disorders in the blind and sleep disturbances in children with neuro-psychiatric disorders. It is also used for sleep enhancement in healthy people.

Lazy Cakes, dubbed the world’s first relaxation brownie, contains 8 milligrams of melatonin, as well as valerian root (also a known relaxant) and rose hips. Kush Cakes, a premium relaxation brownie, were developed by a licensed pharmacist. In wild psychedelic packaging, this brownie seems to be marketed to the twenty and thirty-something pot-smoking crowd. LullaPies, with its cute and apt name, is referred to as a gourmet relaxation edible. These are cookies, rather than a square chocolate brownie, and is twice as strong as Lazy Cakes, meaning 16mg of melatonin.

While all three products are sold as and meant only for adults, brownies are a tempting treat for kids and are sold along with other sweet treats in some stores. There is no age limit to purchase, which has become a big concern for parents and politicians.