Surprise! Frappuccinos And Coolatas Are Not Health Food
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have just released the findings of a 2007 study on "blended coffee beverages" served by Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. The conclusion: "Calories in blended coffee beverages are high ... modifying standard formulations of blended coffee beverages, such as using low-fat milk or smaller serving sizes, would also reduce calorie content." Um, yeah.
The New York City-funded study looked at 1,127 Starbucks purchases and 1,830 from Dunkin' Donuts, and included surveys of customers at 42 Starbucks and 73 Dunkin Donuts. After reviewing the data, the CDC concluded:
Blended coffee beverages have many more calories than does a brewed cup of coffee or tea, to which calories are introduced mainly from added milk or sugar. One high-calorie blended coffee beverage sold at Starbucks is the Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème; the largest size ("venti," 24 oz) with whipped cream contains 750 kcal, or approximately 38% of the 2,000-kcal diet often used as a benchmark for total daily calorie intake. A large Dunkin' Donuts Vanilla Bean Coolatta (32 oz) contains 860 kcal.
While most of the data collected by the CDC might seem obvious to anyone who's ever tasted one of these drinks, the agency does make some good points about how coffee chains could offer customers lower-calorie alternatives:
Small changes on the industry's part could also help reduce calorie intake. The high calorie content of blended coffee beverages is attributable in part to the large portion sizes. At Dunkin' Donuts, the sizing for small, medium, and large ice-blended drinks is 16 oz, 24 oz, and 32 oz, respectively, and the average calorie content we calculated was 397 kcal. However, if Dunkin' Donuts adopted Starbucks sizing of 12 oz, 16 oz, and 24 oz for its ice-blended beverages, the average calories in beverages offered would drop to 285 kcal.
The report also acknowledged efforts undertaken by both Starbucks and Dunkin' to introduce lower-calories drinks. In the end, though, the findings were somewhat inconclusive, stating that the drinks "most likely contribute to the obesity epidemic." Hmm. Sounds like it's time for another study.
Calories From Beverages Purchased at 2 Major Coffee Chains in New York City, 2007 [CDC via Gothamist]
(Photo: basheertome)
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Comments:
Now I want a Java Chip Frappaccino. Mmmmm. I'm supposed to be cutting back on calories! Nooo! Bad Pecan! Only water and juice for you!
Off topic, but I just noticed that we've yet to have one cat photo. Is Consumerist jumping on the Day Without Cats bandwagon late? Say it ain't so!
The Light frappacinos are pretty great.
Grande coffee frappacino Light = 130 calories (Tall = 90 calories)
Even if you get it flavored with caramel or something, the 16oz Grande is still "only" 160.
@pecan 3.14159265: *dumps a bag of sugar in juice*
oops. looks like the juice is a lost cause. Only water for you.
wait, so reducing the number of calories in a drink reduces the calorie content?
and consuming less means i'm consuming less calories?!?
why didn't anyone ever tell me this?
I don't visit Starbucks often, but their drinks have to be better for you than the raspberry-mint Dove hot chocolates with Milky Way caramel foam I make on the Falvia machine at work.
Just add two half-and-halfs and a vanilla creme for extra transfatty goodness!
Calorie Bomb!
And whenever I order a drink of this type (Cafe Vanilla Frappachino with skim milk) it is 100% guaranteed that I will be asked if I want "whip" (whip cream).
Yes, please - spray synthetic aerosol calories on top of my fattening drink I'm trying to make somewhat lower calorie.
Also - am I the only one who intentionally does NOT order using Starbucks-required fake language, just for the amusement factor of listening to the clerk go out of their way to correctly repeat the proper way of ordering to help my ability to become more adept in speaking their fake marketing-speak?
[Please issue prize for longest sentence in thread]
@SkokieGuy: I speak in normal english too, when ordering at starbucks.
Mostly because I am not cool enough to know their "lingo". But screw that, they'll talk in english if they want my business (which admittedly only happens rarely).
Is it just me or do the clouds behind that drink look like the AT&T logo. I smell merger! From now on unlimited texts will be known as the Grande plan.
I thought the "Crème" Frappuccinos didn't even contain any coffee. I guess they were including those in the study just because they're sold by a coffee-focused chain.
@pecan 3.14159265: Given all the dead vowels in the britney thread, they could use a kitty pic there.
@Kavatar: They're looking for calorie content regardless of the beverage, so yes, they're including the strawberries and creme and the green tea latte and such.
@Jeremy82465: Those aren't clouds. There's glass there. It's the reflection of the top of the drink.
Surprise?
I would have thought the whipped cream and large quantity of sugar gave this away?
@SkokieGuy: For the most part it's totally natural aerosol calories. Its just cream that's been floofed up.
It's not like its made of plastic ( and they do have lite whip cream ).
Considering how rarely I'll get one of these types of drinks now, I always take guilty pleasure in asking for the whip cream.
why do these studies always use the largest, most extreme version of the beverage?
Are calories bad? Or is it consuming calories without using them that is bad? Seems to me it's easier but not helpful to tell people the amount of calories, when the real problem is that people aren't using the calories they consume. Use the stairs. Walk. Get off your lazy starbucks/dunkin donuts eatin' ass.
@karlrove: Because that's the size that people get- it's either the default size, or priced so people think it's a deal to get a larger size. 10 cents more for a large?! I'm gonna stick it the man!
@ThinkerTDM: They also happen to be calories that don't contain a lot of valuable nutrition, just a lot of sugar. (Okay the milk probably has some calcium, but there are far better ways to get that.)
Are Frappuccinos a disease?
The blended drinks most of the coffee chains do now are made with a drink mix base. Those seem to be the source of the extra calories. I quit ordering them when I discovered they used a mix rather than shots of espresso and flavorings.
Instead I order whatever drink I want over ice without whip. If you add skim milk it lowers it even more. The typical iced drink like a mocha is two shots of expresso, about 1/2 cup of milk and shots of syrup. The milk and the coffee is relatively low in calories. Most simple iced drinks have about 2-3 shots of syrup and I ask them to half it on certain drinks or they are so sweet I can't drink it.
One of these is only 170 calories
[www.cariboucoffee.com]
Can we file this under, "DUHHHHH?" I mean, maybe I'm just craaaaaaazy, but this seems as shocking as finding out that Spam isn't actually a health food.
@ThinkerTDM: Drinking the calories also makes it easier and quicker to consume them. The giant fatsugar beverage can keep you occupied for about 10 minutes (just guessing) but give you as many calories as a decent meal - which, if you need to cut things up and chew them - could take 4 times as long. If you take into account the natural amount of time your body needs to know that it has eaten (~20 minutes), slurping down large amounts of calories becomes a bad thing.
What an excellent use of taxpayer dollars. Hopefully, the CDC will soon investigate whether or not chain smokers have healthier lungs than non smokers. I'll be waiting with bated breath for the results of that study.
@SkokieGuy: How about a prize for the longest ridiculous drink order?
I'll have a grande, decaf, triple five-pump vanilla, non-fat, no foam, whip cream, extra hot, extra carmel, upside down, caramel macchiatto with two paper cups please.
Maybe I'm lucky those drinks have never been attractive to me. I know they're more like a yummy milkshake than anything else, but I can't get beyond the fact that it's coffee... And I'm one of those few adults who can function without coffee and while I love the scent, I can't bear to drink it.
I at least wanna try a small one before they make laws banning drinks like that.
@MostlyHarmless: Unfortunately, "Britney" plus "kitty" brings up images that are not safe for Consumerist.
Maybe Kitty and Amex? I'll see what I can find.
If you like any variant of coffee ice cream, your coffee tolerance is high enough for these.
@Ayumi~n: The way we're going, it may not be long before any food with any flavor is considered verboten.
@dLMN8R: And if your need it with real caffeine order it with an extra shot. Otherwise it's just flavoring.
@pecan 3.14159265:
Even better, because the reflection of the straw looks like the death ray from the Death Star!
Pew! Pew!
Every women's magazine, health magazine, newspaper health section, and health-related newsletter said the same thing ages ago, and it was obvious even then. So why do we need a government agency doing a (presumably very expensive) study by five authors, including two MDs and a Ph.D., when the average Men's Health freelancer could have covered the whole topic in two hours flat? And shouldn't the CDC be out curing swine flu or something?
Add another case to the "No shit" file.
It's really not that hard, considering I find most Sbux drinks to be too sweet. I always get sugar free (vanilla) syrup, and get only half as many shots as they typically do. I also only put a small dash of cream in my iced coffee. And voila, low cal pick me up.
@gStein: Thats only a rumor. In the days of old, the church would have your head for such heresy, claiming you to be a sorcerer in bed with the devil.
@SkokieGuy: I refuse to call a small by it's other "name." I want a small cappucino, not a venti or a tall or whatever creative lingo you want to perpetuate among your hipster fanbase of poetry reading new age beatniks with a status symbol printed haphazardly on the side of a corrugated cardboard sleeved wrapped around a flimsy fountain drink cup.
Ok, rant over. I think i was going somewhere with this, but i don't even remember anymore. Anyways, i always give them a hard to spell foreign name just for my own personal amusement. It's amazing how few people know how to spell vladimir.
"While most of the data collected by the CDC might seem obvious to anyone who's ever tasted one of these drinks, the agency does make some good points about how coffee chains could offer customers lower-calorie alternatives..."
They do offer lower calorie alternatives (traditional iced espresso drinks, iced brewed coffee, etc), people want the drinks with all the fat and sugar.
![[icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com]](http://icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com/files/2008/11/funny-pictures-your-cappuccino-has-a-cat-in-it.jpg){kind=link}
There goes my diet plan.