To be fair, it’s the same amount of sugar as most other sodas and had less caffeine than a typical coffee. The real issue is that a lot of their marketing targets a younger audience who probably shouldn’t be drinking caffeinated drinks yet.
I say this as a long term caffeine for the rest of my life addict. Coffee + sugar is a wildly different effect than just coffee. I avoid sugar completely during my coffee hours.
Coffein simply blocks the receptors in your body that send the signals to your brain that you are tired, while sugar is essentially pure energy. I’m no expert on this subject, but afaik both coffein and sugar increases blood pressure, which is probably not an ideal thing.
Energy drinks often contain a bunch of other stuff - e.g. Taurine, which isn’t necessarily bad per se, as it eliminates some of the caffeine side effects (jitteriness), but that may arguably make it more addictive.
A tall coffee at Starbucks has about 230mg of caffeine and that’s fairly typical. A large coffee at 90mg would either be 2/3rds decaf or incredibly watery.
I dont think Starbucks is considered a cofee in europe. More like an american desert cofee honestly.
And how large even is that? Half a liter?
Typical cofee in europe is at max half of that.
There are huge variations between chains in a single country, let alone between countries. And ‘large’ in the US likely means something very different to what ‘large’ means in different parts of Europe.
But your point stands up, in general. Starbucks is noticeably low in caffeine (in the UK) and 90mg would be low in a medium (chain) coffee here:
A medium cappuccino at Costa Coffee contains a “massive” 325mg of caffeine, almost five times the strength of the Starbucks version with a modest 66mg.
By contrast, Greggs and Pret A Manger also use significantly less caffeine in a cappuccino of the same size, at 197mg and 180mg respectively. Caffè Nero had the second lowest levels of caffeine after Starbucks in this drink specifically, containing between 110mg and 115mg.
The study also found that one single espresso from Pret A Manger contains 180mg of caffeine, or six times as much as its Starbucks counterpart. Pret’s filter coffee also contained the highest caffeine levels at 271mg, compared to 225mg at Greggs and 102mg at Starbucks.
To be fair, it’s the same amount of sugar as most other sodas and had less caffeine than a typical coffee. The real issue is that a lot of their marketing targets a younger audience who probably shouldn’t be drinking caffeinated drinks yet.
I say this as a long term caffeine for the rest of my life addict. Coffee + sugar is a wildly different effect than just coffee. I avoid sugar completely during my coffee hours.
Hi. What’s the different effect? I’ve never considered that before.
Coffein simply blocks the receptors in your body that send the signals to your brain that you are tired, while sugar is essentially pure energy. I’m no expert on this subject, but afaik both coffein and sugar increases blood pressure, which is probably not an ideal thing.
Energy drinks often contain a bunch of other stuff - e.g. Taurine, which isn’t necessarily bad per se, as it eliminates some of the caffeine side effects (jitteriness), but that may arguably make it more addictive.
The most popular energy drinks in Sweden are sugar free but contain 180mg of caffeine, that’s two large cups of coffee.
A tall coffee at Starbucks has about 230mg of caffeine and that’s fairly typical. A large coffee at 90mg would either be 2/3rds decaf or incredibly watery.
I dont think Starbucks is considered a cofee in europe. More like an american desert cofee honestly. And how large even is that? Half a liter? Typical cofee in europe is at max half of that.
There are huge variations between chains in a single country, let alone between countries. And ‘large’ in the US likely means something very different to what ‘large’ means in different parts of Europe.
But your point stands up, in general. Starbucks is noticeably low in caffeine (in the UK) and 90mg would be low in a medium (chain) coffee here:
Then the real solution would be regulating their marketing.