Last year, Kristen Bell, the voice of Anna in “Frozen,” said that she found gummies containing melatonin helped her young children sleep more peacefully. A recent government report that says last year there was a 500% increase in the number of poison center calls involving kids eating melatonin gummies. We hope her kids dodged that bullet.

Melatonin is a brain hormone produced in response to darkness. It helps control a person’s circadian rhythms (24-hour internal clock) and stimulates sleep. And from 2012 to 2021, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that more than 4,000 children were hospitalized after ingesting melatonin (either accidently or intentionally) and two died while at home.