A splash of sugar in your coffee feels harmless, but it adds up faster than most people expect, especially once flavoured syrups get involved.
Plain coffee with sugar
A single teaspoon of sugar is about 4 grams, or roughly 16 calories. A black coffee with one or two teaspoons stirred in stays fairly low, around 16 to 32 calories worth of sugar, and nothing else.
Shop bought flavoured drinks
This is where things climb quickly. A medium flavoured latte from a chain coffee shop can contain anywhere from 20 to 45 grams of sugar, the equivalent of 5 to 11 teaspoons, once syrup, sweetened milk, and any added toppings are counted. A seasonal specialty drink can exceed that, sometimes reaching the sugar content of a can of soft drink or more.
Why syrup adds more than sugar does
A pump of flavoured syrup typically contains both sugar and water, meaning you are adding sweetness and diluting the coffee at the same time. To reach the same flavour intensity as a spoonful of real flavoured sugar, more syrup is often needed, which means more sugar overall for a similar taste.
How to cut back without losing flavour
- Use flavoured sugar instead of syrup, since a teaspoon carries more concentrated flavour than an equivalent pump of syrup diluted with water
- Reduce by a quarter teaspoon at a time rather than cutting sweetness all at once, which is easier to adjust to
- Let the coffee itself do more of the work, a well brewed coffee needs less sweetness to taste good than a weak one
- Skip the whipped cream and drizzle toppings on shop bought drinks, which often add as much sugar as the drink itself
None of this means sugar in coffee is a problem, most people can enjoy it without any issue. It just helps to know where it is actually coming from, since the syrup pump is usually doing more work than the spoon.