Last week’s focus was on the financial aspect of drinking better coffee. This week we are focusing on the health aspect of drinking better coffee. This was the one of the biggest driving forces to the creation of Galaxy Girl Coffee.
When I was active-duty navy, I would make my poor man’s mocha (hot cocoa in my drip coffee). I would use an entire packet of hot cocoa mix in my 16 oz cup of coffee. This wasn’t a really big problem, as I was relatively active, and I still limited myself to usually two cups of coffee a day.
Occasionally, I would go and get mochas from the local coffee shop. It routinely had a bunch of coffee and chocolate syrup sludge at the bottom of my cup. It was also sweeter than I liked but made the coffee palatable.
When I first roasted for myself, I used my regular dosing of hot cocoa mix and creamer. I eventually got curious as to how the coffee tasted before I put stuff in it, and I tried it black. It was good. Better than any coffee I’d had before.
Unfortunately, being Autistic and having my morning coffee being part of my strict routine means I struggled with drinking coffee black. What I did like is that I could easily reduce the amount of hot cocoa mix I put in my coffee to just a small spoonful, with a splash of oat milk for creaminess. I loved that I could still taste the yummy coffee, but my Autistic needs were met too. This made me think hard about how drinking better coffee could be better for our health.
Let’s look at what the numbers tell us.
What we know:
Liquid coffee creamer serving size is 1 tablespoon (15 ml) and has 30 calories, with 5 grams of added sugar and 5 total grams of fat.
Dry coffee creamer serving size is ½ teaspoon (2g) and has 10 calories, with 1 gram of added sugar.
Whole Milk serving size is 1 cup (240ml) with 0 grams of added sugar, though it does have 12 grams of sugar, 8 grams of total fat. If you do that math, though, that works out to 0.75 grams of sugar for the same tablespoon serving of liquid coffee creamer, and has the added benefit of containing Vitamin D, Calcium, and Potassium.
Granulated sugar is all added sugar, and a teaspoon is 4 grams. A pump of syrup flavoring varies but is around 1 fl oz (30ml) and has 100 calories with 23 grams of added sugar.
My hot cocoa has a serving size of 3 tablespoons (31g) for 130 calories, with 19 grams of added sugar and 2 grams of total fat, though, if we use the same serving size as dry coffee creamer, it drops those numbers a bit. It also has trace amounts of calcium, iron, and potassium.
Black coffee has very few calories. Maybe 2 calories per 8 oz cup. When we start doctoring our coffee to make it palatable, we start adding a lot of calories and sugars. A regular 16oz vanilla latte at one of the large coffee shop chains has 260 calories with 34 grams of sugar. If you add whip cream, you add another 70 calories and 2 grams of sugar. Each pump of syrup adds 20 calories and 5 grams of sugar.
I understand that I’m comparing apples to oranges in the coffee world, as espresso drinks are different, but if the coffee is good enough to get an Americano with a splash of cream, you get the same size drink, with a bit of creaminess, the same amount of caffeine, for a fraction of the calories.
While no flavored and sweetened coffee drink is healthy. If we change our coffee quality, maybe we’ll stop adding so many pumps of flavoring syrup to our espresso drinks and reduce our flavored coffee creamers to our home brew. We really are a judgement free coffee company. We just want to provide better options to our customers so maybe they’ll be able to be that little bit healthier.