12 Coffees with Crazy Calorie Amounts
Does anyone remember the day when a cup of coffee was just a beverage and not an entire meal in itself?
The coffee house culture has transformed coffee from a relatively low-calorie drink to a decadent concoction that barely even tastes like coffee. Unfortunately, all of this coffee creativity also comes with crazy amounts of calories from all the milk, cream, fat and sugar used.
Here are just a few of the hundreds of coffees that will wreck your diet and deliver a meal or even almost a day’s worth of calories in some cases.
Butter Coffee
Butter coffee is also known as Bulletproof Coffee and is popular among some fitness enthusiasts. Its claim is that it gives you sustained energy throughout the morning.
Its 27 grams of fat WILL give you energy but if you aren’t careful, it can create a calorie surplus for your body. (serving size: about 10 fluid ounces)
Dunkin Donuts Frozen Coffee
This is Dunkin Donuts large size (32 fluid ounces) with cream and caramel flavor.
For most people, it is half to two-thirds of their recommended daily allowance of calories! And, about 393 mg of caffeine!
Starbucks Brown Sugar Shortbread Latte
This is for their Venti size made with whole milk. Starbucks offers a large range of high-calorie coffee concoctions.
Their seasonal offerings (pictured above) are among the highest in calories and will help with customers achieving a nice fat layer to keep them warm during the cold Winter months.
McCafé Mocha Frappé
Most of McCafe’s coffee beverages are pretty generous with their sugar amounts and their frappes are the most generous. The calories shown above are for their large size.
Café Brevé
A cafe breve is an espresso-based drink made with half & half instead of milk. Most cafe’s make this drink and this listing is for one that’s 16 fluid ounces.
Biggby Avalanche Latte Creme Freeze
Biggby is a growing coffee chain in the US and they have an overwhelming amount of high-calorie lattes and frozen coffees. This is just one of the many that will give you a large majority of your daily calorie needs in one 32 fluid ounce cup.
Baskin Robins Caramel Cappuccino Blast
Ice cream based coffee drinks rack up the calories fast! This amount is for their large but even their mini size has 430 calories.
Dairy Queen Midnight Mocha Frappe
DQ’s Frappes are coffee syrup blended with their soft serve ice cream with some more sugar thrown in the form of chocolate chips, cookies, or caramel depending on the flavor. The listing is for their large size and has as many calories as a decent meal.
Peet’s Coffee Egg Nog Latte
This holiday favorite from Peet’s Coffee is pretty decadent and will help you put on the holiday 15 in no time.
This is their large size and contains a whopping 84 grams of sugar which is like eating 7 tablespoons of white sugar.
Dutch Bros Coffee Freeze
Dutch Bros Coffee is pretty popular in the Pacific Northwest and has a plethora of high-calorie hot and cold coffee drinks. Their Freeze line has many large drinks at or over 800 calories!
Caribou Coffee Chocolate Caramel Truffle Mocha Cooler
Caribou Coffee definitely takes the prize for having the most calorific coffee drink. For some people, this is almost a day’s worth of calories in one drink complete with 111 grams of sugar and 76 grams of fat.
It’s like eating 9+ tablespoons of sugar mixed with 7 tablespoons (almost a stick) of butter.
Costa Coffee Honeycomb Latte
Americans aren’t the only folks who like their coffee sweet. Costa Coffee, a popular UK chain, serves up some pretty sugary coffees too. Their Billionaire range is pretty crazy as well as some of their standard hot and cold offerings.
How to Get the Calorie Level Down in Your Coffee Drink
Perhaps as an occasional treat, these drinks are acceptable, but for those that turn to them on a regular or daily basis for your caffeine kick, you probably aren’t doing your body or waistline any favors.
If you are overweight and trying to shed a few pounds, cutting coffee drinks like these out of your diet is a great first step in cutting down your overall caloric intake. (Understanding your Total Daily Energy Expenditure and tracking what you eat for awhile is even better.
The most obvious way to make your coffee less calorific is to simply switch to black coffee, however, this is easier said than done. Many just don’t like drinking black coffee. Here are some tips to enjoy a creamy coffee but with fewer calories.
- Ask for 2% or skim milk when ordering your coffee drink. Many coffee shops use whole milk by default.
- Use lactose-free milk: Lactose is the sugar in milk but the human tongue doesn’t taste lactose as very sweet. When companies sell lactose-free milk, they simply add the lactase enzyme to milk which breaks down the lactose into simpler sugars which your tongue can better taste. When you use lactose-free milk, the coffee will naturally taste sweeter even though the sugar content hasn’t changed.
- Ask for sugar-free flavorings and syrups. These have come a long way over the years and many taste great without adding calories.
- Avoid the ice cream based coffee drinks. These are much higher in calories than frozen coffee drinks that use crushed ice.
- Don’t be afraid of cream. Adding a tablespoon of cream to your brewed 12 fl oz coffee only adds 52 calories while a Tall Starbucks Latte is 180 calories. If you like a creamy coffee choose a brewed coffee or an Americano with cream instead of a milk-based espresso drink.
Beyond the negative effects that all those calories have on maintaining a healthy weight, the excess sugar in many coffee drinks is also a menace to one’s health.
More and more research shows that eating large amounts of sugar is linked to all kinds of diseases.
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