Seasonal Coffee Drinks vs. Regular Flavored Coffee - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.

Seasonal Coffee Drinks vs. Regular Flavored Coffee: Nutrition

Well, holiday beverages at places like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, they can be just as bad for you as a lot of the other lattes and beverages you find at those places. So, just like any other time of the year, you want to be real careful of those drinks. For example, the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte, the grande has about 400 calories, 17 grams of fat, and 48 grams of sugar. So, to cut that back, the first thing you can do is always to cut down the size. You could order the tall size, which is 12 ounces.

Then, to cut out the fat, because the ingredients in that are espresso, steamed milk, whole milk, unless you ask for skim milk, whipped cream, and then a pumpkin flavored syrup, and then pumpkin spices. So to cut back, you could order it with steamed milk and skip the whipped cream. That would take all of the fat out of it. And by having, also cutting back the size, you would cut the calories in half.

There's really not a great way to cut back on sugar, 'cause they don't use sugar free syrups for flavoring. But by cutting down the size, you can cut that from 48 grams of sugar, down to 37 grams of sugar. And these sorts of guidelines, like ordering it made with skim milk, getting a smaller size, skipping the whipped cream. That'll help cut back the calories in any of those coffee drinks year round.