Search “sleep cookies” and you’ll find two very different things. Most results are recipes: oatmeal, almond or chamomile cookies meant to be a cozy bedtime snack. A few are packaged cookies made with a measured amount of an ingredient chosen to help you unwind.
Our Sleep Cookie is the second kind. Here’s what that means, what’s inside, and what the research actually says.
What is a sleep cookie?
A sleep cookie is a bedtime snack designed to be part of your wind-down routine. Homemade versions usually lean on ingredients people associate with evenings, like oats or chamomile. Packaged versions like ours add a specific ingredient at a specific dose, printed on the box, so you know exactly what you’re eating.
What’s in the Fields Good Sleep Cookie
Our Sleep Cookie is a soft-baked oatmeal raisin cookie with 250mg of L-theanine in every cookie. It’s made with old-fashioned oats and no seed oils or artificial flavorings. Each 49g cookie has:
| Per cookie | Amount |
|---|---|
| Calories | 190 |
| Protein | 3g |
| Total sugar | 10g (6g added) |
| Fiber | 3g |
| L-theanine | 250mg |
| Melatonin | None |
What is L-theanine?
L-theanine is an amino acid found naturally in green tea (Hidese et al., 2019). It's been studied extensively for its ability to promote relaxation without sedation, meaning it helps quiet mental noise and ease you into a restful state without the pharmacological heaviness of a sleep hormone.
What does the research say?
The most relevant study we know of gave 30 healthy adults 200mg of L-theanine a day for four weeks, compared against a placebo, with neither participants nor researchers knowing who got which (Hidese et al., 2019). People scored better on a standard sleep quality questionnaire while taking L-theanine, including how long it took to fall asleep and how often their sleep was disturbed. Their stress-related scores improved too.
We want to be straight with you about the limits. It was one small study, and the authors themselves note that 30 people may not be enough to draw firm conclusions. Our cookie has 250mg, a little more than the 200mg used in the study. We think it’s promising research, not proof.
Why no melatonin?
Melatonin is a hormone your body naturally produces to signal that it's time to sleep. Supplementing with it can help you fall asleep faster, particularly for jet lag when your circadian rhythm is disrupted. It also leaves a significant portion of people feeling groggy the next morning.
The issue is dosing. Over-the-counter melatonin supplements are typically sold in 5mg or 10mg doses. Research suggests that 0.5mg to 1mg is often sufficient for sleep onset effects, meaning most commercial products are delivering 5 to 20 times the effective dose. That overshoot is believed to be a major contributor to the grogginess many users report the next morning.
For the longer version, read why we chose L-theanine over melatonin.
When to eat one
We made the Sleep Cookie for the end of the day: after dinner, on the couch, or as part of whatever your wind-down looks like.
Who shouldn’t eat sleep cookies
The Sleep Cookie is not recommended for children, pregnant women or women who are nursing. If you take medication or have a health condition, check with your doctor first.
Sleep cookie FAQ
Are sleep cookies a sedative? No. Our Sleep Cookie contains no melatonin and no sedatives. It’s a snack made to fit into your evening routine.
How much L-theanine is in a Fields Good Sleep Cookie? 250mg per cookie.
What flavor is it? Oatmeal raisin.
Can I just bake sleep cookies at home? You can bake a great oatmeal cookie at home. What’s hard to do at home is get a consistent, measured dose of an ingredient like L-theanine into every cookie. That’s the part we did for you.
Try it now
Our Sleep Cookie comes in boxes of 10.
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