Starbucks Announces Actual Pumpkin Will Be Added To Pumpkin Spice Latte

pslWell, it’s August, and we all know what that means: several more weeks of summer! Oh, and also that pumpkin spice lattes will soon be hitting your nearest Starbucks, because that happens well before fall begins. This year, Starbucks is drawing attention to the annual event by changing the recipe up a bit, removing caramel coloring and changing to a pumpkin sauce that has a small amount of pumpkin purée in it.

It’s probably no coincidence that a post detailing the ingredients of a pumpkin spice latte by Vani “Food Babe” Hari, a noted nutritional scaremongerer, went up on the day that the latte first went on sale last year, aiming to capture peak PSL-related Internet traffic and buzz. Her Pinterest-ready graphic contained a generous helping of nonsense (50 grams is a lot of added sugar but not “toxic,” for example) but also raised some interesting questions, such as why a drink that already has espresso in it needs artificial caramel coloring, and why there was absolutely no pumpkin in a pumpkin spice latte.

Both of those things are what Starbucks is changing: in a blog post today, the company announced that they’ll be slightly changing the recipe this year. They’re eliminating the caramel coloring, and switching to a pumpkin sauce that contains a small amount of pumpkin purée.

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