Hazelnut? Caramel? Sugar-Free Vanilla? Sip on This
A Bite-Size Read for Your Health and Your Waistline
Whether our coffee of choice is from Starbucks, Dunkin, or the local coffee shop, the menu features a variety of flavor options to make our cup of joe a little (or a lot) sweeter. Vanilla, peppermint, mocha or caramel, regular syrup, or sugar-free syrup — which syrup should we pick, or should we skip the syrup altogether?
When it comes to our health, the first thing to keep in mind is that sweetness is an acquired taste. The more we have it, the more we want it and the more of it we need for something to register as sweet (Yay for building tolerance! Ugh!). So, when we order our first Starbucks drink, one pump of syrup (or one packet of sweetener) might be perfect… until we can’t taste it anymore and we’re adding two, three, four more to get that desired sweetness. It’s also important to remember that maintaining level blood sugar plays an important part in our metabolic health and weight management. When we get a sugary vanilla latte, we’ll want to blunt the sugar’s impact on our system by consuming protein, fat, and/or fiber with it. We can do this either by getting an egg and cheese sandwich or by adding low-fat milk into our coffee to soften that sugar bomb we just dropped into our stomach!
Another factor to note in assessing our use of flavor syrups is serving size. Most coffee shops tend to be of the Torani brand; let’s use this one for a closer look. The Torani vanilla flavor syrup serving size is two tablespoons…and it’s not clear how many tablespoons are in a single pump! Different employees may also do a half pump or full pump, when we’re used to the other, which introduces more variability into our drink’s nutritional content and sweetness. One serving of the Torani vanilla syrup includes 80 calories and 20 grams of added sugar. The ingredients are pure cane sugar, water, natural flavors, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, and citric acid. It’s safe to say that while the syrups are super tasty, they don’t contribute much to our bodies’ nutritional needs.
Many focusing on their waistlines opt for the sugar-free varieties. Looking at the Sugar-Free Torani Vanilla Syrup, the serving size is still two tablespoons, but they’ve cut it down to 0 calories and no sugar, with 5 milligrams of sodium. The ingredients are purified water, vanilla extract with other natural flavors, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, citric acid, xanthan gum, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium. On the plus side, it’s not likely to spike our blood sugar, but it brings with it more preservatives. Whether the normal sugary flavor syrup or the extra preservative-filled sugar-free flavor syrup is better depends on our individual goals and needs. Personally? I just go with the cane sugar and ask for less of it. Truthfully, with either choice, the coffee will taste sweet and can potentially fuel our addiction to sugar. If we order a drink with flavor syrups in it, we can ask the barista how many pumps they usually add, then request half of what they typically use.
Overall, it’s also important to pick our battles. Some of us may be concerned about the amount of sugar we’d ingest on a regular basis with these flavor syrups. For others, this may be the one thing that makes us happy in the morning. In that case…we don’t have to take that away from ourselves! If you decide to skip the syrup but still want flavor in your coffee, consider adding a bit of cinnamon to your drink and mixing it. Either way, make your cup of coffee your own with eyes wide open and no surprises when ordering that vanilla latte.
