Voke Tab For Energy!

I'm a caffeine-aholic. I drink a cup of hot coffee and a glass of iced green tea every morning to get me started, and throughout the day, it's not uncommon for me to hit up the funky breakroom coffee for a pick-me-up. Without caffeine, I'm groggy, and I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

But coffee isn't always available. Like say, when you're driving across town for a meeting and you can't keep your eyes open. Or when the last person to empty the office coffee pot fails to make more, even though the handmade, passive-aggressive sign hanging over the coffee machine strongly suggests that you're an asshole if you don't (you know who you are).

In these cases, Voke Tab really comes in handy. Voke sent me a tin of their all-natural, vegan, chewable energy tablets to try. And I can attest that they really do work!

I first put them to the test one morning when I had to be at a press conference at 9 a.m., much earlier than I typically make it to the office. I hadn't slept very well the night before, and I was dragging. After the 20-minute drive to the event, I was fighting to stay awake. And I hadn't thought to bring any coffee along. I popped one of the seven Voke tabs, and voila, I was okay. It was like I'd just drank a cup of coffee or energy drink.

But unlike an energy drink, these aren't made with weird chemicals. The energy comes from organic guarana berry seed (good for focus and memory), green tea leaf (endurance), and acerola cherry (vitamin c and antioxidants). Each tab contains 77 milligrams of caffeine. There's no sugar since they're monk fruit sweetened. The reddish color comes from beets, not artificial colors. And there's 100% of your RDA for vitamin c in every tab! And they come in a handy purse-sized tin.

The only negative is the taste. They're not bad, but they're very, um, tart. The chewable tablets have a tanginess that reminds me of that B12 mouth spray. It's not super-pleasant, but you just chew it and the taste subsides, leaving you alert and ready for action.

One of the worst (okay, the worst) things about being a reporter is transcribing interviews. An hour-long interview can turn into a 3-hour transcription session with all the stopping and rewinding (and Facebook/Instagram breaks to keep your mind from going to mush).

I had to transcribe a particularly long interview on Tuesday afternoon, and I was fading fast. So I popped a Voke tab. The first pic is before (see how I tired I look!). The second one is me eating the tablet. The third pic is the face I make while eating the tablet, and the final one me all perked up. I plowed through the rest of my interview with no problem.

Since you only get seven tabs in a tin, I'd say these aren't for everyday use. But they're great to have on a hand in a pinch. You can order single tins from their website, or if you want a stash, they sell the tins in boxes of four or 12. And they have memberships for those who want to re-load their tins on a monthly basis.