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Okay, we’ll admit: the review that we’ve had on the site for these gummies over the past year has been honest, but it’s also been intensely harsh. If you missed it, to sum it up, we proclaimed “Seriously, why even drink at all if this is the cost?”
On Toast!’s website, they did say that they were revamping the flavor, but we hadn’t really been following the developments all that closely over the past year. So we were pleased when Toast! reached out to us to try their new formula! Honestly, we didn’t want to hate these gummies! We thought the underlying idea was fantastic, and we hadn’t seen anything else like it. It was just that they tasted so bad. So bad.
Toast!
In addition to revamping their recipe over the past year, Toast! has also revamped its branding. (In particular, we love the nopal + gummy images on the homepage! It’s v. Pinterest meets desert gummy dreams). In addition, they’ve expanded their gummy collection to include an Immunity Gummy as well as a melatonin Sleep Gummy. Those seem a little more standard than this novel anti-hangover gummy we’re here to review, but we’re enthusiastic about the whole line-up! Let’s toast!
Ingredients
The main event here is 855 milligrams of a proprietary blend, which includes Nopal Powder (hence the cactus picture on the site), Milk Thistle, L-Cysteine, and Matcha Green Tea.
Milk Thistle is a well-known liver aid. But if this is your first thistle rodeo, we wrote a little bit about it in our Highline Wellness Detox Gummy review.
At first glance, we weren’t exactly sure why Matcha Green Tea was included, but the internet reminded us of something we had forgotten: Green Tea contains “flavonoids”. Flavonoids are plant metabolites that serve a variety of purposes: one of them is that they can help reduce inflammation. Green tea is also high in antioxidants that help support your liver.*
Reducing inflammation is also a key benefit of the Nopal (other than it makes a perfect leather!). And l-cysteine is an amino acid that shows promising benefits for hangover symptoms like nausea and headaches! 1
As always, we like to remind people that when there’s a proprietary blend, we can never say exactly how much of each ingredient is in there. So if you’re interested in exactly how this compares to just having matcha or taking a milk thistle supplement on its own, we can’t really help you out there, unfortunately.
But for what it’s worth, we actually reached out to Toast!, and they kindly gave us some insight into their process:
In terms of the formulation, we partnered with the leading researcher in this area, Dr. Joris Verster, who is a long time clinical researcher based out of the Netherlands and the founder of the Alcohol Hangover Research Group. Our formulation is based on the research of Dr. Verster and others in the AHRG, and the ingredients and dosages we use come from that research and Dr. Verster’s feedback.
But wait. There’s more!
In addition to the proprietary blend, there’s a handful of other vitamins and minerals in these gummies. Here’s the breakdown:
6 mg Zinc (55% DV)
12.5 mg Niacin (62% DV)
4 mg Thiamin (334% DV)
16 mg Calcium (2% DV)
10 mg Potassium (0% DV)
10 mg Sodium (0% DV)
And even 1g of protein!
All of these minerals are the kinds of stuff that get depleted after a night of booze, so they’re included to help replenish what we lost when we tied one on.
(We do notice that there’s not a ton of each of those vitamins in each serving, other than Thiamin! Thiamin, like other B vitamins, helps produce energy in your cells, and we all know that there’s nothing we need replenished after a night of drinking more than our cellular energy. 🥵).
Basically these gummies work in two ways: to restore critical nutrients that can be depleted after a night of drinking, as well as provide herbal supplements to hopefully support your liver, reduce general inflammation, and curb some of the misery that accompanies a hangover.
Effectiveness
So when we tried this new batch, we felt great the next day after drinking. Sunshiney and fresh as the morning dew.
But, to test these, we drank a normal, reasonable amount for us. We didn’t pound shots or mix our booze or any of the other terrible ways we set ourselves up for failure the day after.
So basically, we didn’t test the outer limits of their effectiveness. If you have taken these and pushed the boundaries, please let us know how they worked for you, as we’d love to include a spectrum of how much you can drink and still get the benefits! But it’s baby steps for us over here, and we can report that they do work within the bounds of what’s a usual drinking amount for us.
A couple other things to add, per the site’s recommendation: These are best taken before your first drink, although Toast! states that as long as you take them before bed, they’ll aid in alleviating whatever hellscape awaits you the next day. They will do nothing for you if you wait to take them until you’re already hungover, so make sure (as the name says!) that you Toast with these gummies before you drink.
But what about the flavor?
In our previous review we had this to say about the flavor:
“The smell of them permeates the room as soon as you open the single-serve pouch of gummies, a scent which I can only describe as Bitter Rubber Fart. And the packet comes with six. Six! So when you’ve managed to chew through three of them without barfing, you’re still only halfway there. Rancid Lemon Tar appears to be what they’re going for with the flavor.”
We are happy to report that the taste is MUCH better. (And you only have to take five!) They now come in a sugar-dusted, sour gummy bear form. The gummy flavor is pretty good!
We still aren’t exactly sure which ingredient the intense bitter/rubber vibes come from, but they’re still there, lurking underneath the gummy flavors unmistakably, although much less prominent.
Maybe it’s just us, but there was also lingering aftertaste for a few minutes, kind of onion-y for whatever reason. But thankfully it doesn’t affect the taste of whatever you’re about to drink.
Personally, we quaffed a nice French wine, and any lingering aftertaste did not affect our palette or skew the various notes. 🍷 (*chef’s kiss!*)
That said, if you haven’t been in the trenches with the last batch, you might be surprised at how intense these are.
We knew that reformulating the flavor of these gummies must have been an arduous process, and Toast! had this to say about the vast improvement:
As for flavoring, that’s definitely been a difficult process! Our gummies are much more complex than most supplements, and because we use a number of herbal ingredients like nopal, milk thistle, etc. (which do tend to be bitter), it has taken us a lot of time to get the flavor down. We worked with a number of different gummy makers before partnering with an American candymaker that we work with now to produce them, which is why the flavor and consistency is so much more candy quality!
Final Thoughts
We are so relieved that Toast! has a new and improved hangover prevention gummy and that there’s someone out there looking out for our liver health. If you weren’t “lucky” enough to try their previous iteration, we will warn you that there is still an undercurrent of the previous flavor, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
But we can firmly recommend that you should try these at least once. And in the meantime, we’re emboldened by their dogged r+d enough to try their “Before You Sleep” gummies, and their Toast! To Immune Support Gummies!
And always, drink responsibly!
