Dive Summary:

• The Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it will investigate the safety of caffeine added to non-beverage items like gum, jellybeans, nuts and other foods, as well as its effect on children and adolescents.
• The only time the FDA ever explicitly approved the added use of caffeine in a product was in the 1950s for sodas, and Deputy Commissioner of Foods Michael Taylor says the addictive ingredient's current abundance of use is "beyond anything FDA envisioned."
• The FDA's decision comes just as Wrigley releases its new Alert Energy Gum, which Taylor says has as much caffeine as "four cups of coffee in your pocket."

From the article:

... Caffeine has the regulatory classification of “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, which means manufacturers can add it to products and then determine on their own whether the product is safe.

“This raises questions about how the GRAS concept is working and is it working adequately,” Taylor said of the gum and other caffeine-added products. ...