Before You Reach For Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte, Check Out The Nutritional Information

Starbucks' Seasonal Drink

I noticed an ad in this morning's paper for Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte. It's sounds warm and inviting. They describe it as "the ideal vision of fall, bright days that grow cool and call for warm knits as we walk under leaves that curl red and gold in a soft wind". That's probably a good description because you'll be walking under those red and gold leaves for about 4 miles to work off just one of those Grande Lattes. As for the warm knits, you'll be needing them in a bigger size as you will be gaining a pound every 9 days by drinking just one of these Pumpkin Spice Grande Lattes each morning.

Check Out the Nutritional Information

I will give Starbucks credit for creating an interactive nutritional website where you can change sizes and ingredients to see how many calories and how much fat, etc., is in each of their drinks. For the Pumpkin Spice Latte, I compared all the different sizes with different types of milk, with and without whipped cream and here's what I found:

* The Grande (16 ounces) with 2% milk and whipped cream has 380 calories, 13 g of fat (8 g of which is saturated), 50 mg of cholesterol, 51 g of carbohydrates, 14 g of protein and absolutely no fiber.

* The Grande with soy milk and no whipped cream has 300 calories (still enormous) but it lowered the fat to 4 g of total fat, 0.5 g of saturated fat and 0 mg of cholesterol. It is still high in carbohydrates with 54 g and provides 11 g of protein and no fiber.

* The Grande with non-fat milk and no whipped cream has the best stats with 260 calories (still not great for a morning cup of coffee), no fat or cholesterol, 50 g of carbohydrates, 14 g of protein and no fiber.

If you must try this beverage, at the very least, go for the "Short" which is only 8 ounces. This will cut all of the above numbers in half. Better yet, just ignore all the marketing hype on these rich drinks and order a plain cup of their coffee. More and more studies are showing that coffee has many health benefits from lowering the risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and cancer to enhancing our cognitive performance.

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