Alert without the caffeine

There is a leaf in the Summit Stack that does one of the jobs coffee does, without the coffee.

It comes from the mango tree. Not the fruit, the leaves, which growers prune off cultivated trees every year and used to throw away. In parts of Asia and Africa a tea made from mango leaves has been drunk for centuries, and the reason turns out to be a compound in them called mangiferin, which the leaf makes in far greater quantities than the fruit ever does.

Mangiferin is what the extract is standardised for. It has been studied for alertness, for how quickly the brain works under a bit of pressure, and for recovery after hard exercise, and unlike almost everything else that sells itself on focus it has no caffeine in it at all. We believe it gives the sharpness people reach for a third coffee for, without the racing heart, the jitters and the crash, which is why it is in a stack meant for people who train and then have to go and do a full day.

In the American pouch it appears under its trade name, Zynamite, a mango leaf extract made in Spain to a fixed strength. In the British pouch the label says mango leaf extract, because the UK has its own rules on which named extracts a supplement can use, and again we would rather work inside them than around them. The same leaf, chosen for the same compound, doing the same job.

Like everything else in the stack, take it in the morning with the daily blend. Not in the evening, unless you want to be very awake at eleven.