Starbucks Coffee is definitely my favorite place to indulge on sweet drinks. In fact, I am its daily customer at CSULB. I casually drop by during class breaks on Mondays and Wednesdays to order Grande sized, Iced White Chocolate Mocha. Whenever I order, the workers would always ask me if i want whip cream on it and I would shyly reply with a "yes" to be polite. Little did I know that this response would cause me to gain few more pounds in my weight.
Two weeks, ago however, I was looking at the nutrition table of beverages at Starbucks website. Curious human being that I am, I clicked on Grande Iced White Chocolate Mocha. Unsurprisingly, it was 450 calories with 180 calories of fat; I already expected that such a rich tasting drink would be filled with at least 400 calories. However as i looked at the right hand corner of the nutrition label, there was a "customize section" where I can recalculate by changing the size of the drink or not adding the whip cream. Since i had nothing better to do at 11 PM, I made the check box on "No Whip Cream." In my head, I didn't expect much of a change. I mean, it was just without a handful of whip cream on a beverage. When I looked at the revised nutrition label, however, I was dumfounded. It now had 340 calories with 80 calories of fat, at least 100 calories less than with whip cream! Mind you, I pay careful attention on calories of foods that I eat. This was a big shock to me because i didn't think that a small amount of whip creams can change the amount of calories this drastically. I took a short breath and searched for my second favorite Starbucks beverage, Mocha Frappuccino, on the web page. With whip cream, it had 380 calories with 130 calories of fat while it had 260 calories with 35 calories of fat without this fatty cream. Once again, i was taken aback by the major change in calorie amount. I suddenly felt sick from the thought of all the fats that i consumed in the past from this little, white whip cream; I thought about how many times I ordered from Starbucks and began to realize how 100 extra calories can build up over time. I didn't know that a polite "yes" added extra, worthless fat in my stomach without realizing it.
The next time you go to Starbucks, don't be too shy or polite to say "no" when the workers politely ask you whether or not you want whip cream on your drink. It is sometimes beneficial to say "no".
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Whenever I go to the Starbucks, I get whip creams too. When they ask me if I want whip cream on top, I always answer yes too. Everything is good with the whip cream. I did not know that whip cream could have such a big effect on calories. I thought whip cream would not hurt like you did. After reading this blog, it makes me think again about putting whip cream on my drinks from now. I think I will probably not put the delicious whip cream because it will really put some weight on my body. Thank you for posting this blog. It helps me to realize that the impact on small whip cream could really gain some weight on my belly.
ReplyDeleteIt’s true that those little things that people don’t expect to add up to major calories do. I remember in the past watching the news on the television saying that one drink at Starbucks is the same thing as eating a Big Mac at McDonalds. People get caught up in how drinks and meals taste so good that they don’t realize the content of what they are eating and how frequently they are eat it. With the various types of delicious drinks at Starbucks how can we blame people such as ice hazelnut signature hot chocolate, cinnamon dolce frappuccino,and peppermint white chocolate mocha. Even the name for the drinks sounds good. People just need to be a little more careful about nutrition of the beverages at Starbucks when ordering.
ReplyDelete-Vincent Luong
This was a really interesting blog. I am the type of person that does not consider really any of these factors at all in general. Thankful to people like you that go out of their way because of their curiousity, I gain knowledge of things like this every so often. Also like you said, you would never think that just adding that bit of whipped cream to the top of your drink would make such a drastic difference. I too drink Starbucks a good amount and I always get whipped cream. As weird as i may sound saying this, they should make a label in the store saying that because that is a major shocker. It's crazy to think about all the other things that people add whipped cream on besides Starbucks.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. When I was little I would never think about whipped cream as being fattening. Just that I loved it and I wanted a lot of it. As I got older I became really aware of what I was putting in my body. One year during high school I was trying to help my mom start dieting and eating more healthy. Like yourself, we would both go to Starbucks every morning. Until I started to look at the nutritional facts for dieting purposes, I had no idea how fattening whipped cream actually. It definitely is deceiving how something so small could make such an impact on a persons body.
ReplyDelete-Kristian Villalovos