How Many Calories in Coffee?
Calories in Common Coffee Drinks
| Beverage | Volume (oz) |
Calories |
| Instant coffee | 1 rounded tsp dry powder |
4 |
| Instant coffee | 8 |
4 |
| Espresso Coffee | 1 |
1 |
| Brewed Coffee | 8 |
2 |
| McDonald's Cappuccino | 16 |
130 |
| McDonald's Latte | 16 |
180 |
| McDonald's Mocha | 16 |
330 |
| McDonald's Brewed Coffee (Large) | 16 |
0 |
| Dunkin Donuts Latte | 10 |
120 |
| Dunkin Donuts Cappuccino | 10 |
80 |
| Dunkin Donuts Mocha Swirl Latte | 10 |
230 |
| Dunkin Donuts Brewed Coffee | 10 |
15 |
| Starbucks Brewed Coffee | 16 |
5 |
| Starbucks Caffè Americano | 16 |
15 |
| Starbucks Caffè Latte | 16 |
220 |
| Starbucks Caffè Mocha (no whip) | 16 |
290 |
| Starbucks Caffè Mocha (whip) | 16 |
360 |
| Starbucks Cappucino | 16 |
140 |
| Starbucks Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha (whip) | 16 |
560 |
| Starbucks Caffe Vanilla Frappucino Blended Coffee (whip) | 16 |
430 |
| Starbucks Hot Chocolate (no whip) | 16 |
330 |
Coffee Tips
- Shocking caffeine amounts in Starbucks drinks.
- The Do's and Don'ts for Healthier Coffee
- Are You Drinking Too Much? Find out How Much Coffee You should be drinking.
Not all coffee drinks are high in calories. Plain coffee is almost a zero calorie drink.
Milk and Sugar make Coffee Fattening
Coffee drinks are high in calories due to what we add to the coffee/Caffeine is a bitter chemical so we tend to sweeten it up - with milk, sugar, or syrups.
The larger the drink volume - the more milk you will be getting. With espresso-based drinks (latte, cappuccino) - the amount of water in the drink is minimal (typically 45ml / 1.5 fl. oz per espresso shot).
You do the math: a 16 ounces Grande Latte from Starbucks will have two espresso shots (~ 3 oz) -- that leaves around 13 ounces of 2% milk (depending on how much foam tops the drink) - so there's 198 Calories already.
Add in cream, a pump of flavored syrup, and some sugar - and you are in for a very calorie-dense drink - more like sweetened milk than coffee.
Calories in Coffee Extras
| Extras | Calories (per Tablespoon) |
| Cream | 52 |
| Half-and-half | 20 |
| Whole milk | 9 |
| Fat-free milk | 5 |
| Sugar | 48 |
| McDonald's Coffee Cream (liquid) | 20 |
| Plain nondairy creamer (powder) | 33 |
| Plain, light nondairy creamer (powder) | 25 |
| Flavored nondairy creamer (powder) | 45 |
| Flavored, reduced-fat nondairy creamer (powder) | 40 |
| Plain nondairy creamer (liquid) | 20 |
| Plain, light nondairy creamer (liquid) | 10 |
| Flavored nondairy creamer (liquid) | 35 |
| Flavored, reduced-fat nondairy creamer (liquid) | 20 |
Coffee is almost Zero Calorie
According to the USDA nutrient database - an 8 ounce cup of coffee (brewed from grounds) has just 2 (yes two) Calories. The calories come from a tiny amount of protein and some mono-unsaturated oils.
The coffee bean has oils in it (which is why a barista often needs to clean their espresso machine to prevent an oily build up). Sometimes a really bad coffee can be due to the oils in it becoming rancid (this often occurs from dark roasts, which cause a subsequent release of oils - if the beans are stored for a long time the oils may go slightly rancid).
So: coffee beans + water = virtually calorie-free.
The Bottom Line
If you are looking at reducing the amount of calories in your diet and coffee is your thing: It's time to work on that sweet tooth. The best option is to drink an Americano (espresso + water).
Believe it or not, espresso drinks have less caffeine than brewed drinks (where the water is in contact with the coffee grounds for a longer time).
Minimize the amount of extras you put into your coffee - and you may well remove a significant amount of Calories from your diet.
Had Enough of Coffee?
Read our guide to quitting coffee.Nutrition sources: starbucks. mcdonald's, dunkin donuts.
Read More
- The Do's and Don'ts for Healthier Coffee (Diet Blog)
- MiO: The New, Healthier Crystal Light? (Diet Blog)
- Meet Greg, 155 Pounds Down! (DailySpark)
- Brad Pitt Gives His Kids Coke for Breakfast! (Diets in Review)
87 Comments
Add Your Comment
Created / Updated: January 29, 2012
(I love that the READ MORE above is How To Quit Drinking Coffee. Immediately harkened me to the oft quoted line from Brokeback Mountain about WHY CAINT I QUIT YOU?)
I guess Im lucky Im all about the black & bitter?
do I need to fess up that, at times, there is a fresh baked muffin close behind the caffeine?
ReplyI reckon the best thing to go with that black and bitter coffee is a piece of black and bitter chocolate (dark 80%).
ReplyA man after my own heart. If my girlfriend was out of the picture I'd go broke-back with you.
ReplyHaha Roger_that. you just made my day. Have a great year
ReplyOne thing I've always wondered is, how much liquid is contained in the creamers that you get at McDonalds or a diner, etc. It's certainly less than a tablespoon. Yes?
ReplyI think they're usually a teaspoon?
ReplyI've always kind of thought this was kind of a "no duh" kind of thing...of course black coffee has almost zero calories; it's the additives that make it high-calorie. When I was overweight, I used to get these 20 ounce "cappuccinos" from the local Kwik Trip and they were probably a good 200-300 calories or so because they had a lot of sugar in them. One of the first substitutions I made in my diet when I wanted to get healthier was to just use a little flavored creamer in my coffee. So I cut about 250 calories just like that...pretty easy. I still like my coffee on the sweet side, so I use flavored creamer in it and just figure it into my daily calorie intake. I never get those froufy Starbucks mocha-latte-double-whip-cappuccino things...too expensive and too many calories for me.
Replymy heart skipped a beat when I saw it in my RSS feed.
Coffee? Has CALORIES!?!?!
Thank god it's only two. If it had been in the double digits per cup, I'd be consuming hundreds of calories every day.
ReplyI know, that would be my problem, too. I drink way too much to continue doing so if it had any more than a couple.
ReplyI would not have guessed that coffee only had 2 calories on its own. Its interesting how much of a difference little things like milk and sugar in coffee make in our caloric intake and ultimately our overall health.
ReplyCoffee is no longer a habit for me, but I still enjoy a cup every few days. I like it black, but every once and a while I want it a little sweet. A teaspoon of sugar (can't imagine adding a whole tablespoon) at about 16 cals won't kill you once or twice a week. It's the repetitive, addicitive-type coffee drinking with all the little additions of cream-and-sugar-like stuff that adds up and will get you. Most "diets" do list black coffee as a "free food" along with tea.
ReplyThanks for letting everyone know your daily coffee consumption stats. Really interesting!
ReplyI love coffee. Fortunately black coffee! People often dont include things like coffee when they are following a calorie controlled diet plan. But if you have milk & sugar it certainly adds up.
ReplyI come from a family of black coffee drinkers, but I don't care for it black unless it's really good coffee. I'm sort of a coffee snob; I buy my own fresh roasted beans (My church has a special coffee-trade deal with a small coffee grower in Honduras that we met when we went down there for a vacation. As a "thank you" gift, he offered to provide us with as much fresh roasted coffee as we want for $5 a pound. The farmers get all the money from the sales and we get the benefit of the best, freshest coffee I've ever tasted"), grind them right before I brew it, and drink it only when it's fresh. I've tried to get used to drinking my coffee black all the time, but I just love the flavor of the creamer and the hint of sweetness from a bit of Splenda. I don't drink it all day though...just one cup a day is all I need.
ReplyI just read (in the book A Taste of Sweet) that most people who drink their coffee black are "non tasters" (have far fewer taste buds). I don't sweeten mine much, but have only had a few cups of coffee in my life that I could drink black. Icko.
ReplyIt is much better to drink tea rather than drinking coffee. Me I do this for almost 4 years, but still I drink coffee once in a while.
ReplyWell, not necessarily. It depends on the tea. And they are both diuretics.
Replysorry...drinking a cup of tea in the morning is NOT the same as a nice cup of freshly ground coffee....tea? i think not. =)
ReplyI don't generally drink lattes or cappucinos (they're not that popular where I live anyway, no starbucks here in the North West of Ireland!) but when I lived in Montreal I'd have one every once in a while.
I just treated it like I would a slice of cake or pie: get the smallest size and savour it, and don't eat it too often.
ReplyWhen I was dieting I always felt like a bit of a supermodel when I drank coffee. Now I like it dark and a little bitter too.
ReplyShouldn't the calories in your table be kilocalories? I.e. instead of an espresso being only one calorie it is actually 1000 calories. I've seen this confusion more often; lots of people can't tell the difference between a cal. and a kcal. If you check the calorie count on the USDA nutrient database it clearly states kcals!
ReplyYes, they're kcal, which over here is often called a Calorie (with a capital "C"). At least the conversion is simple - whenever I'm in Australia, I have to re-learn the conversion from Joules to kcal.
Replya food calorie IS a kilocalorie. I normally specify Calorie, but that's not necessary because everyone (err, most everyone) knows a food calorie is a kilocalorie.
ReplyYeah, food Calories are ALWAYS kilocalories...that's why it's capitalized. 1 Calorie=1000 calories.
What's really confusing is reading the nutritional info in kJ. The conversion is such a pain in the butt.
ReplyWell telling people that a cup of coffee is 2000 calories would freak a lot of people out
ReplyAs the above have said. kcal = Calorie. Which is why the column is headed with Calories (instead of calories).
Replystopping back by to see what other people thought...AS I SIP MY COFFEE :)
ahh the irony.
wait, that isnt irony.
I hadnt vowed to give it up.
My bad.
carry on.
Enjoying her 2 calorie drink with her GOODNESS KNOWS THE CALORIES treat,
M.
Replyhahahahahahahaha....that is soooooo funny....I can change what I put into my coffee, but I will never give it up........LOL....Coffee-aholic in Maine.
ReplyI drink my coffee black and unsweetened and love it! I used to add all sorts of sweet stuff and creamers to my java, but now the taste of sweet milky coffee really grosses me out.
ReplyDoes coffee make anyone else breakout? It seems like whenever I drink a lot of coffee, I get blemishes a few days later. I also drink my coffee with milk and have heard that milk can cause some people to breakout...maybe that's it? At any rate, I try to avoid coffee for this reason, even though I really enjoy it.
ReplyThere is a study in the May edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that concluded that "The ingestion of Caffeinated Coffee (CC) with either a high or low GI meal significantly impairs acute blood glucose management and insulin sensitivity compared with ingestion of Decaf Coffee. Future investigations are warranted to determine whether CC is a risk factor for insulin resistance.
The subjects drank either a cup of CC or DC 1 hour before eating a bowl of either high or low GI cereal.
The Caffeinated Coffee had the biggest effect - the difference between cereals was negligible.
So cereal before coffee is good and coffee before cereal is bad.
But I need my latte
link to the abstract
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/5/1254
ReplyHow is it that McDonalds brewed coffee has no calories and yet all the other brewed coffees listed have at least 2 calories?
ReplyDebbie,
I noticed that too. I really don't like McD's coffee so I'm willing to sacrifice 2 calories out of my Day just to drink someone, anyone else's coffee.
JJ
ReplyThe method that you brew the coffee affects the amount of oil that's in it...the classic drip-brewed coffee that most people drink has the fewest oils in it. French pressed coffee and percolated coffee has more oil in it because there's no filter to catch it.
ReplyNot that two calories are ever going to matter much, but I am going to guess that Macdonalds buys such crappy coffee it doesn't have any of those nice natural oils in it. Visually, I love that little skim of coffee bean oil on the top of the coffee. Don't know why I think it makes the coffee taste better - I'm sure it doesn't really matter - but I have an emotional response to good coffee with that touch of oil, and I believe it tastes better.
There's only two coffees I really don't like - Macdonalds (bland) and Starbucks, (awful taste of overroasted beans). And I bet together they sell more coffee than anyone in North America.
Love the Tim's.
ReplyUgh, I HATE Starbucks coffee. It's way too bitter for my tastes. I don't get why everyone likes it so much. Actually, it's probably so nasty tasting so that people pay more to get the Frappuccinos and the Lattes and stuff...that way, they taste the sugar and whipped cream and hardly any coffee, lol.
ReplyStarbucks is pretty gross...In fact, I think the only times I ever have it are when my aunt gives me a bag of the beans or when I am out and so desperate for coffee that I must buy it there (normally, like Spectra, I'm far too cheap). Every time, I realize why I normally don't.
Replystarbucks tastes like crap when you get it brewed at the store because they GRIND IT INTO POWDER to stretch out the bean value.
if you overgrind coffee it gets bitter. buy some starbucks beans, take them home and grind them yourself...you will notice a huge difference in flavor.
Replyoh the oils matter. buy yourself a coffee press and check out the difference. you end up with a lot more of the oils in pressed coffee than you do from coffee brewed through a paper filter. if you like that oil flavor, i am guessing you will never go back to brewed coffee once you use a press!
ReplyActually McDonald's Coffee is the highest grade of coffee
ReplyUh.. mcdonalds and tim hortons have the same supplier for their coffee.
Reply