coffee

Counting Calories In Starbucks Coffee

Everyone seems to love Starbucks, and they have created so many delectable beverages, that once you taste them the calories seem to be unimportant to most of us. However, a person who is dieting needs to be aware of the calories in these coffee drinks. For instance, a Frappucino in a large cup yields an amazing three hundred and thirty-one calories. That’s a lot for a drink that started out at zero. Another example of a high calorie drink is a latte. A tall one has an amazing two hundred and ten calories. Most dieters would agree that these drinks would not be beneficial to their diets, but without doing the research on the calories in coffee drinks there is no way to know what they are actually consuming.

Low Calorie Coffee Tips

When you fix coffee to your liking, chances are you will add calories. There is however ways that you can cut down your intake of calories consumed in coffee.
Start by choosing a small cup, either eight or 12 ounces would be fine. When ordering, ask that your coffee be prepared with fat free milk. This can save you from up to 80 grams of fat. Use a sugar substitute instead of sugar. (1 tablespoon of sugar is 15 calories) You should always order coffee without cream, whipped cream, coffee syrups etc. when you are trying to cut back on the calories in your coffee.
A good way to limit the calorie intake is to refrain from more than one or two cups of coffee.

Did You Know…?

The history of coffee can only be tracked a little more than a thousand years, a relatively short period of time compared to alcoholic beverages, which have been consumed since prehistory, and tea, which goes back to over a thousand years BC.  Despite this, coffee has spread throughout the world as a popular beverage. A look at the history of coffee will help to show how it became so widespread.

African Origins

The history of coffee begins sometime around the 9th century, with its origins in Ethiopia as a beverage.  The legend of coffee is that Ethiopian herders noticed that their goats were especially perky after eating the berries of a particular bush, and thus got the idea to consume it as a stimulant.  The reality is that coffee probably had already been developed as a drink by the 9th century as a natural result of cultivation of plants.  From Ethiopia, the drink spread to North Africa, including Egypt.

Middle Eastern Success

The introduction of coffee to Egypt make it accessible to ports with trade to the rest of the Middle East, where coffee became a popular drink by the 1500s.  Shortly after its introduction, Muslim authorities placed a ban on the drink due to its stimulant properties.  But much like prohibition in the United States, the ban on coffee didn’t last and was later rescinded.  At this point in history, though, tight controls on such a commodity were in place. Though coffee in its roasted form began to be exported to Italy and other European Nations, unroasted seeds and plants were forbidden to be exported.

Colonization and Coffee

This tight control over the export of coffee plants didn’t last.  This period of the history of coffee ended when Dutch traders smuggled coffee seeds out of the Middle East in the 1600s, where it was planted on the island of Java, which is still a major exporter of coffee today and also shares its name with a nickname for the drink.  Interestingly enough, as coffee plants spread to other European colonies, another century into the history of coffee, in the 1700s, the plant was smuggled to Brazil, which is still the largest exporter of the drink.

Coffee in America

The history of coffee in the United States follows that of early wars.  Introduced there in the 1700s, coffee’s popularity didn’t take off until the Revolutionary War, when tea was scarce and colonists turned to other drinks.  The drink again gained in popularity during the war of 1812 for similar reasons.