Foosh Energy Mints are made by Vroom Foods, the same company that has been making Buzz Bites for years. The basic idea of both products is the same: take the caffeine of a full cup of coffee (100 mg, to be precise), wrap it up in a small candy that you can pop right into your mouth.

I happen to not be a coffee drinker. I drink both black and green teas, neither on a daily basis, and even the former has significantly less caffeine than a cup of coffee. I used to drink soda on occasion, but have essentially been off the fizzy sugar water for years. In other words, I was completely decaffeinated when I decided to test these “seriously caffeinated” peppermints out.

Somewhere around mid-morning on a Friday, I decided to try my first one. Vroom didn’t invent caffeine, and I’m not going to hold them responsible for the effects of the stimulant, which can vary from person to person. I will note that the body adjusts to caffeine, so if you want your cup of coffee, Foosh, or whatever to be truly effective, you should make sure you are not ingesting caffeine either frequently or regularly, but only as needed.

Having done just that, the result in my caes was a certain nervous energy that, unfortunately, I had no real way to dissipate. I wondered if I might be experiencing a placebo effect, so I took another mint to make sure, and soon the physical signs were unmistakable. I was jittery, my hands were shaking, my heart was running a little faster, and I wanted nothing more than to start running laps until the feeling went away. If I were on my way to a work-out, this would have been ideal. For the bad timing of being over-caffeinated in an office environment, I can only blame myself.

Don’t be so surprised at my poor decision. I wasn’t really expecting such a pronounced effect, since I didn’t realize how high this dose was compared to anything I’ve ever experienced before. It turns out that 100 mg of caffeine is the equivalent of three cans of soda (which put me at six cans’ worth of caffeine, with my two mints). Also, besides the caffeine, the mints include a cocktail of other, somewhat less potent stimulants, like ginseng and taurine, plus a handful of vitamins. I’ll be sure not to underestimate their effect on me the next time.

Taste is almost beside the point, so long as the candies aren’t inedible. I’ll note that caffeine is actually quite bitter. Most people don’t realize this because it’s rarely found in such a concentrated dose; in a soda or cappuccino, for example, the caffeine taste is basically drowned out by sugar and other flavours. Given such a large amount in a candy of this size, it’s impossible to completely mask the taste of the bitter alkaloid. The strength of the peppermint flavour, however, similar to what you’ll find in an Altoid, at least relegates the bitterness to an odd aftertaste. Certainly the caffeine peppermint pairing works much better than the “chocolate” Buzz Bites chews.

Foosh Energy Mints do pretty much exactly what they promise: they’re edible enough, serve as potent breath fresheners, and deliver a powerful dose of caffeine (along with a handful of secondary active ingredients). How you use them and to what effect will depend on how much of a caffeine hound you already are, and probably on many parametres of your baseline physiology. But I have no qualms at endorsing these as, indeed, seriously caffeinated.

Article first published as Tastes Review: Foosh Energy Mints on Blogcritics.