Is Your Coffee Or Tea Giving You A Pot Belly?

Morning coffee.  Coffee break.  Afternoon tea.  A nice cup after dinner. Many of us love – need – our coffee or tea.

A nice hot steaming cup of coffee or tea can hit the spot and a hot skim latte is a great snack – soothing, calorie controlled, and protein laced.  On the other hand, a giant hot coffee drink filled with syrup and whipped cream – often clocking in at 400 to 500 calories — might be soothing but sure isn’t great for your waistline.

Black Or Light And Sweet?

How do you like your coffee?  Black, light and sweet, regular?  Do you add sugar and pour milk until the color and taste is just right?

As you dump sugar and pour cream into mugs and those too hot to touch cardboard containers, have you ever thought about how many calories you’re actually adding to an otherwise very low calorie drink?  Probably not. They’re calories not usually measured and all too easy to forget.

What Do You Put Into Your Coffee Or Tea?

There are about two calories in eight ounces (a small cup) of unsweetened black brewed coffee or tea – doesn’t matter if it’s hot or iced. Not a bad deal.

What a lot of us don’t think about is how many calories are in the add-ins that we stir into our coffee and tea.

How much milk or half and half do you add to your coffee or tea? How much sugar? Bet you don’t have a clue.  We all do a freehand pour.  Try measuring how much you pour and you might be really surprised.

The Add-Ins

• Heavy cream, 2 tablespoons:  104 calories
• Half and half, 2 tablespoons (1/8 cup):  40 calories
• Whole milk, 2 tablespoons:  18 calories
• 2% (low fat) milk, 2 tablespoons:  14 calories
• Non-fat milk, 2 tablespoons:  11 calories
• Table sugar, 1 tablespoon:  49 calories
• Table sugar, 1 teaspoon:  16 calories

How’s This For An Eye-Opener?

Say you have 3 grande (Starbucks) – or 3 large (Dunkin’ Donuts) – size coffees a day.  Each is 20 ounces or 2.5 times the size of a traditional 8 ounce cup.

If you add 4 tablespoons of half and half and three teaspoons of sugar to each that’s adds up to128 calories for the additives and around 5 calories for the coffee.  That’s 133 calories for each grande/large cup of coffee. Have three of those and you’ve added 399 calories a day from coffee (or tea).

Do that every day for a year and mathematically that’s the equivalent of 145,635 calories. Does that make you stop and think?