The three letters on the back of the pouch

PQQ is the ingredient that makes people reach for their phones. Pyrroloquinoline quinone. It sounds like something from a chemistry set, which is exactly the kind of thing we said we would not put in a pouch, so it deserves a proper explanation.

It is a small molecule that occurs naturally in food. Kiwi fruit have a little of it. So do green peppers, parsley, natto, and human breast milk, which is usually a sign that a thing has been part of our diet for a very long time. The amounts in food are tiny, which is why the one in the Summit Stack is made by fermentation, the same way we make yoghurt or vinegar, using a bacterium that produces it in quantity.

It has been through the European food-safety process and is approved for adults at up to 20mg a day. Two rules come with that approval and we follow both: it is for adults only, and it is not for anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding.

Why it is there. Every cell in you runs on mitochondria, the tiny engines that turn food and oxygen into energy, and you have fewer of them and they work less well as you age, which is a large part of why a forty-five-year-old feels different from a twenty-five-year-old at the top of a hill. We believe PQQ helps the body make new ones and protect the ones it has, which is what the research on it points to, and why it went in next to the NMN (NAD+ in the UK pouch). The two do related jobs. NMN feeds the engines. PQQ, we believe, helps build them.