A recent survey was carried out to look at the ingredients of Christmas special drinks in the UK’s top coffee chains. The one that contained the most sugar was Pret A Manger’s mint hot chocolate, with a standard sized cup containing over 50g sugar – this is the equivalent to almost 2 Mars bars or 1.5 cans of Coke or 20 McVitie’s digestive biscuits.
To put this into context, the NHS advises that adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars per day and children less than this. One hot chocolate could be almost double the recommended daily amount of sugar.
This is not just an issue over Christmas as many drinks in coffee shops contain high amounts of sugar. As a treat once in a while, it may not be an issue, but having a regular sweet drink is likely to lead to tooth decay and possibly other health issues.
With it being the New Year and the time many people make resolutions and changes to their lifestyle, maybe this is a good time to consider the drinks you are buying from coffee shops for yourself or your children. Better still, if you are having hot chocolate or similar drinks, why not make them at home so you can have better control over the ingredients and save money too.
- Here are the other drinks that made the top 5 of the survey:
- 2. Costa Coffee hazelnut praline hot chocolate (38.6g)
- 3. Starbuck’s toasted marshmallow hot chocolate (36.7g)
- 4. Starbuck’s eggnog latte (33.8g)
- 5. Costa Coffee hazelnut praline latte (32.6g)
