Love An Iced Coffee? We've Got Bad News For You

Is it really summer if you don’t have some form of iced coffee in your hand at all times? Thanks to all their syrupy additions, most iced coffee drinks aren’t as strong as normal coffee, so it should be better for us, right?

Well, that doesn’t seem to be true. Which? found that iced coffee drinks from high street coffee shops contain significant amounts of sugar – some ‘regular-sized’ or medium drinks contain so much sugar they exceed the maximum  recommended sugar daily intake for adults.

If you’re a Starbucks frap kind of girl, I have bad news for you. The Starbucks grandé Java Chip Frappuccino with soya milk was one of the worst culprits. It contains 46G of sugar – a whopping 11 teaspoons worth of sugar. 

The NHS suggests a maximum of 30g of sugar a day or 6-7 teaspoons of free sugar a day. Though the sugar tax exists, there’s a loophole that allows drinks made fresh on-site to be free from punitive taxes on high sugar content.

Which? looked at the amount of sugar in blended iced coffees from three of the largest high street chains. They used information found on their websites and also asked the high-street shops directly, they found that most iced drinks had serious sugar levels.

If you have a sweet tooth and like adding chocolate or caramel to your coffee, you’re drinking more sugar than you would in a regular iced coffee. 

A Belgian chocolate and hazelnut frappè crème (oat milk) from Caffè Nero contained 44.5 grams of sugar, whilst a chocolate fudge brownie frappè mocha (oat milk) from Costa has 42.6 grams worth of sugar.

Some drinks that were made with dairy milk had sugar that comes from lactose, a naturally occurring sugar. Cow’s milk contains 5g of lactose per 100ml.

Part of the problem with sugary iced drinks is that the sugar content is not displayed in stores. The law states that calorie content must be shown in stores but sugar content does not.

“We are committed to helping customers make informed and improved choices that work for them, offering a range of customisation options such as choosing our smallest size (Tall) and our oat dairy alternative with no added sugar,” a Starbucks spokesperson told Which?.