Everywhere I go, I always see advertisements for the newest drink of the season from either Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. Right now, pumpkin spice seems to be the trend (for obvious reasons). Don’t get me wrong, I love my pumpkin spice flavored coffees just as much as the next person. This trend will continue into the winter season, where peppermint flavoring will be all the rage and so on.
But I have always wondered, how healthy are these drinks? Especially for those who consume them every day?
We don’t have to look too far beyond TikTok. I’m sure we’ve all seen those videos of baristas preparing crazy drinks for customers. I’m not talking about a pump or two of extra caramel, I’m talking about fifteen pumps of caramel or more, plus granulated sugar. Maybe once in a while it’s okay (if that’s the way you like your drinks, I’m not judging), but what if you consume this every day?
We can also look at the nutritional menus for both Dunkin’ and Starbucks to see just how much sugar these drinks contain.
https://www.dunkindonuts.com/content/dam/dd/pdf/nutrition.pdf
https://www.starbucks.ie/sites/starbucks-ie-pwa/files/2025-09/Aut%20Bev%20Nutritioanls%20.pdf
As a reminder, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 recommends the following: “People age 2 years or older limit added sugar intake to less than 10% of their total daily calories. That means: For a 2,000-calorie diet, no more than 200 calories should come from added sugars. 200 calories equal about 12 teaspoons of added sugar from both food and beverages.” Many of the beverages from these large coffee companies exceed this limit.
One particular drink that stood out to me was the “Large Cereal N’ Milk Coolata” from Dunkin’. This drink contains 187g of sugar (roughly around 67 teaspoons). This is almost 5.5x the recommended sugar limit! The “Large Candy Bar Frozen Coffee” also from Dunkin’ contains 137g of sugar (almost 50 teaspoons). This is less than the previous drink, but it is more than 4x the recommended sugar intake limit. While the drinks from Starbucks contain much less sugar than the ones from Dunkin’, there are also some drinks that stood out. For example, the “Venti White Mocha with Semi-Skimmed Milk” contains 57g of sugar (around 21 teaspoons), which is almost twice the recommended sugar limit. These are just a few examples I found, and of course, these drinks could be high in areas besides sugar, but I am just focusing on sugar levels.
Accio, an AI engine that helps with business reports and more, reported on the top-selling drinks at Starbucks for 2025 (https://www.accio.com/business/starbucks-top-selling-drinks). If you were like me, you also expected hot coffee to be the top-selling item. However, it turns out that it doesn’t even make the top six products. Of course, some of these products are seasonal, but it is important to note that they beat out products offered year-round. The top four in the list are as follows:
- Iced Caramel Macchiato, 2. Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino, 3. Pumpkin Spice Latte, 4. Iced Horchata Oatmilk Shaken Espresso
This makes me question if there is a shift in the definition of “coffee”. Can we still consider it the traditional hot coffee (with possibly milk and sugar) or iced coffee? What about the classic latte? Or has the definition of coffee changed to encompass drinks high in sugar with small amounts of caffeine? Visually appealing drinks, but completely different from traditional coffee.
