As a coffee drinker on a mission to eat healthier, I was shocked to learn that the soy milk in my daily Venti Misto from Starbucks was loaded with added sugar. This freaked me out because, today, it's well known that consuming added sugar is actually terrible for you. Keeping in mind the balance between sugar content and calories, here's the ranking of every Starbucks milk option from worst to best, based on a grande cup (16 oz).
6. Whole Milk
Containing 25 grams of sugar and 320 calories per serving, whole milk is the least healthy kind of milk you can get at Starbucks.
5. Soy Milk
Soy milk is the second to least healthy milk at Starbucks, containing a whopping 27 grams of sugar and 270 calories per serving. Although this milk is sweet and has a touch of vanilla, you pay the price with its costly ingredients.
4. 2% Milk
2% milk comes in fourth to best with 25 grams of sugar and 260 calories per serving.
3. Nonfat Milk
Although nonfat milk has 26 grams of sugar (1 more gram than whole and 2%), it only has 180 calories per serving. Therefore, the large drop in calories outweighs the single extra gram of sugar, putting nonfat milk in third place.
2. Coconut Milk
With 17 grams of sugar and 180 calories per serving, coconut milk comes in second place.
1. Almond Milk
Nothing competes with my good friend almond milk, which boasts just 7 grams of sugar and 130 calories per serving.
So, there you have it. Almond milk is the healthiest milk to get from Starbucks. On a greater scale, the takeaway is to stick to the nut milks because all of them have significantly less sugar than the dairy milks.
Furthermore, if you have a sweet tooth and need to sweeten your coffee drinks, Starbucks has recently added stevia, a natural sweetener, to their cafés. Stevia contains zero calories and zero grams of sugar, so to stick with the healthy trend, sweeten that almond milk latte with stevia instead of Splenda or sugar.