How Many Calories in Coffee?
1 oz of Espresso Coffee has 1 Calorie
And from then on it gets worse…
Here are some common coffee drinks, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that if you are looking after your weight – you’ll stick to black coffee or straight espresso.
| Beverage | Volume (oz) | Calories |
| Instant coffee | 1 tsp | 4 |
| Instant coffee | 8 | 4 |
| Espresso Coffee | 1 | 1 |
| Brewed Coffee | 8 | 2 |
| McDonald’s Cappuccino | 16 | 130 |
| McDonald’s Latte | 16 | 180 |
| McDonald’s Mocha | 16 | 330 |
| McDonald’s Brewed Coffee (Large) | 16 | 0 |
| McDonald’s Caramel Frappe – Most Fattening at McDonald’s | 21 | 670 |
| Dunkin Donuts Latte | 10 | 120 |
| Dunkin Donuts Cappuccino | 10 | 80 |
| Dunkin Donuts Mocha Swirl Latte | 10 | 230 |
| Dunkin Donuts Brewed Coffee | 10 | 15 |
| Dunkin Caramel Swirl Frozen Coffee – Most Fattening at Dunkin | 32 | 1170 |
| Starbucks Brewed Coffee | 16 | 5 |
| Starbucks Caffè Americano | 16 | 15 |
| Starbucks Caffè Latte | 16 | 220 |
| Starbucks Caffè Mocha (no whip) | 16 | 290 |
| Starbucks Caffè Mocha (whip) | 16 | 360 |
| Starbucks Cappucino | 16 | 140 |
| Starbucks Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha (whip) | 16 | 560 |
| Starbucks Caffe Vanilla Frappuccino Blended Coffee (whip) | 16 | 430 |
| Starbucks Hot Chocolate (no whip) | 16 | 330 |
| Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino – Most Fattening at Starbucks | 24 | 600 |
This is the Starbuck’s effect in action. Starbucks turned a low (or no) calorie beverage into a sugar-fat laden monstrosity.
Sick Yet? Check out our guide on quitting coffee here.
I, however, love coffee, but I only drink straight espresso.
Maybe I’m addicted. I tell myself there are worse things to be addicted to, and that makes me feel better.
Most people slam coffee as being bad for you, but plain black coffee has a lot of researched health benefits.
This cup of espresso has just 1 calorie.
It’s the Milk and Sugar!
Coffee drinks are high in calories due to what we add to the coffee.
Caffeine is a bitter chemical so we tend to sweeten it up – with milk, sugar, or syrups.
The larger the drink volume – the more milk you will be getting. With espresso-based drinks (latte, cappuccino) – the amount of water in the drink is minimal (typically 45ml / 1.5 fl. oz per espresso shot).
You do the math:
A 16 ounces Grande Latte from Starbucks will have two espresso shots (~ 3 oz) — that leaves around 13 ounces of 2% milk (depending on how much foam tops the drink) – so there’s 198 Calories already.
Add in cream, a pump of flavored syrup, and some sugar – and you are in for a very calorie-dense drink – more like sweetened milk than coffee.
I think I’m beginning to sound like a coffee snob.
Calories in Coffee Extras
If all else fails, maybe Snoopy can help.
| Extras |
Calories (per Tablespoon)
|
| Cream |
52
|
| Half-and-half |
20
|
| Whole milk |
9
|
| Fat-free milk |
5
|
| Almond Milk |
8
|
| Sugar |
48
|
| McDonald’s Coffee Cream (liquid) |
20
|
| Plain nondairy creamer (powder) |
33
|
| Plain, light nondairy creamer (powder) |
25
|
| Flavored nondairy creamer (powder) |
45
|
| Flavored, reduced-fat nondairy creamer (powder) |
40
|
| Plain nondairy creamer (liquid) |
20
|
| Plain, light nondairy creamer (liquid) |
10
|
| Flavored nondairy creamer (liquid) |
35
|
| Flavored, reduced-fat nondairy creamer (liquid) |
20
|
Coffee is almost Zero Calorie
According to the USDA nutrient database – an 8-ounce cup of coffee (brewed from grounds) has just 2 (yes two) Calories. The calories come from a tiny amount of protein and some mono-unsaturated oils.
A coffee bean has oils in it (which is why a barista often needs to clean their espresso machine to prevent an oily build-up).
Sometimes a really bad coffee can be due to the oils in it becoming rancid (this often occurs from dark roasts, which cause a subsequent release of oils – if the beans are stored for a long time the oils may go slightly rancid).
So: coffee beans + water = virtually calorie-free.
The Best Coffee Drink For You Is…
If you are looking at reducing the number of calories in your diet and coffee is your thing: It’s time to work on that sweet tooth.
The best option is to drink an Americano (espresso + water).
Believe it or not, espresso drinks have less caffeine than brewed drinks (where the water is in contact with the coffee grounds for a longer time).
Minimize the number of extras you put into your coffee – and you may well remove a significant amount of Calories from your diet.
To save even more calories see our 10 Easy Kitchen Hacks for Healthy Cooking.
Nutrition sources: Starbucks. Mcdonald’s, Dunkin Donuts.
Photo Credit: JonathanCohen.
40 Comments
I'm Ted Kallmyer
I do, as a matter of fact, I sometimes put in 3 to 4 tablespoons. Not very healthy, but when I do drink it, it has to be sweet.
It depends on the type of coffee you drink. A plain cup of brewed coffee has less than 5 calories and no fat. But if you dress up your coffee with extras, whether at home or your favorite coffee shop, you also add extra calories.
How can McDonald’s 16 oz brewed coffee have 0 calories if we’ve established 8 oz brewed coffee has 2 calories? I think McDonald’s is full of 💩💩 in their nutrition info. If they’re 🤥 about 4 calories in coffee, what about that Big Mac? What does that REALLY contain?
Totally agree
Who tf puts a tablespoon of sugar in their coffee
I did this morning. All my teaspoons were dirty. 🤦♀️ Tastes like 💩
I do, as a matter of fact, I sometimes put in 3 to 4 tablespoons. Not very healthy, but when I do drink it, it has to be sweet.
I cannot Find out the amount of calories for Dunkin’ Donuts 20 ounce for they have no milk or half-and-half and five sugars
I usually just drink plain coffee with a few non calorie sweeteners. Are they really non calorie? Also I just got a keurig and was looking at a lot of the Kpods and the calories are high for only 8 oz. Are the coffee ground blends as high in calories? I love mocha but not the calories. So I got the Starbucks Mocha Flavored Ground Coffee (only one with mocha). I can’t find calories anywhere on it and even googled it with no luck. When I went to the Ingredients to research them (like suggested in the comments) it only like Arabica coffee and natural flavores. Arabica coffee showed up 4 calories but don’t know what rally to search for for natural flavors. Do that mean it had ALOT of calories in it?
Typically natural flavorings wouldn’t be something that provides calories. The only time coffee has a lot of calories if there are sugar, dairy, and/or fats added.
Very good & can you tell me how many calories are in skimmed milk as everyone bleats on about how soya milk is the way forward? Where I went into Starbucks the barista mentioned that soya milk has a lot of calories & he advocated that skimmed milk is the healthiest way… what is best?
Starbucks soy milk is sweetened and flavored with vanilla. Skim milk has 86 calories per 237ml.
Very nice and helpful artical plz add more
Wow this was a good source of info as I started to research and pay attention to my calorie intake (my first wk on a low cal/low carb diet). I truly enjoy my coffee w cream and no sugar, love the taste of a good strong coffee, but lately I’ve been adding a teaspoon or two of honey (organic)…. and just realized that this alone adds 60calories to my coffee plus 33 from the creamer…. hummmm I guess I’m going back to just coffee w non dairy creamer or a simple, nice strong espresso. Anyways, thank for the information!
Black coffee for me, please!
Is dark roast coffee -1 calorie per 1 tbps? I use my fitness pal app and was recording my coffee intake and to my surprise the dark roasted coffee grounds I chose this week log in as -1 cal per 1 tbps….? Is that correct!?
You mean negative 1 ? I bet you wish that were true! It’s anything from 1 to 4 calories (depending on which source you look at.
Yes. I mean negative one hence the (-) lol. Why would it log as negative 1 calorie? Weird. But how do you know all your information is correct also?
I suspect it’s a rounding issue or bug of some sort. The data on great apps like Myfitnesspal come from massive databases.
The info we have on this page was curated by hand – mostly from the USDA calorie database here: http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/
No foods are literally zero calorie, but some are low enough calorie that it burns more calories to ingest, metabolize, and excrete the food. This is why celery is often referred to as negative calorie; it is mainly water and fiber, which means it is extremely low calorie, and we burn net calories to eat and break down celery. Coffee may fall under this category of negative calories since there is an extremely low calorie amount per 100g of substance (negative calories are generally based off of calories per 100g of food/drink, I believe). Therefore, your app is not entirely incorrect on the calorie amount, but I guess technically the coffee doesn’t have negative 1 calories, it has some calories that we burn off as a result of consuming it (which we don’t factor in for most foods)…either way, the difference between 1 calorie and -1 is not that big, so it doesn’t matter how you enter it into your app 🙂
Haha, if there was any ingestible food item in the world that was negative calories, let me know…I will have some money to invest 🙂
ice cubes
Good luck surviving on that…”food”
ice cubes are water. so of course they contain zero calories. but there is no drink in the world that contains negative calories.
But the ice cubes cool your body, so your body burns (slightly) more calories to stay warm. So the net effect of eating ice cubes would be negative calories (unless you’re overheated already) 🙂
After-dinner mints, peperoncinis, olives, sardines, anchovies and a host of other foods that are either high in insolulable oils and/or vinegar will net negative calories, costing far more to digest than the energy they provide. However, if all you’re doing is counting calories and you think that ingesting a lot of negative-calorie foods will give you a bank that you can spend on that piece of cake, you’re dieting wrong.
I’m trying to watch my calorie intake and this topic has me a little confused. I enjoy black coffee without adding anything which according to your charts above should have about 4 calories per 8 oz. But today when I scanned my Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts coffee grounds in a my calorie counter app, the Starbucks had 25 calories a cup and the DD had 70! Both were medium house blend ground coffee.
So this confuses me as I thought regular black coffee had almost zero calories? Which coffee grounds have the low calorie content I’m after?
Thanks
Your calorie counter app is incorrect.
Even a perusal of the official Starbucks nutrition shows a maximum of 5 calories in a Venti brewed coffee. http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/bold-pick-of-the-day
Given that a cup of coffee could have 7-20 grams of coffee bean in it, I suspect your calorie app is adding up grams of actual ground coffee beans.
Great news! But can you expand a bit more on the “7-20 grams of coffee beans in a cup?” Does this mean that the amount of calories in a cup of brewed coffee is dependent on how many grams of ground coffee beans used to brew it?
Precisely. Although the differences are negligible. Even if you are preparing some really strong coffee, you are still only going to get very few calories – definitely not the 25 or 70 (!) that your app is showing.
Not to mention the extra calories you burn by being jacked up on caffeine. Really we are talking negligible calories compared to the average caloric intake per day
It’s fairly obvious when you add those syrupy flavorings that you’re adding extra calories, but here’s my question/concern: I tend to drink flavored coffees, as in flavored grounds/beans. These bags/canisters generally don’t list nutritional information, and they list the ingredients as coffee and artificial flavors. How do these flavored coffee grounds or beans compare calorie wise?
That’s a tricky one. I’ve had both chocolate and caramel flavored coffee (from a nespresso capsule) – when I researched the ingredients, all they could say was “infused with the flavor”. I suspect this means there is some kind of sweetener in there, but it would be FAR less the sugary powders and syrups that you can buy.
Basically coffee is not sweet. It is a very bitter substance so if you are having some kind of flavoring there will be a sweetener of some sort added (whether artificial or not, you can only research the ingredients list).
Am trying to find fat/calorie info about dry grounds (no drinks bought outside home, such as at a Starbucks). I mean the home brewed FLAVORED coffee such as mocha or hazlenut or chocolate. Can someone help me??? Or
if you’re familiar with kilojoules you can use a tools to convert them. google will answer you or quick visit http://www.kilojoulestocalories.com/
I rarely drink coffee I mostly drink Teas with nothing in them but when I do have coffee I barely use any cream I use like one drop and for sugar I use one raw sugar pack if I feel that I need a buzz plain. but how many calorie will it be with one organic raw sugar pack since raw sugar is all natural than white chemical sugar
Hey Brandon, raw sugar has some trace elements and minerals in it (as opposed to white sugar), so it is a better choice than white sugar.
However, it is still sugar and has the same amount of Calories.
I need my coffee to feel creamy and taste very sweet, which takes 6- 8 teaspoons of creamer powder at 10 calories each. Then I sweeten with 8 packets of aspartame or stevia.
Whoa, that is some sweet/rich coffee! What are your health goals? It may be wise to gradually cut back to a less sweet/ rich cup. Also your overall “sweet tooth” may need to be adjusted.
I sympathize w/your taste buds if not your product choices in powder creamer;
milk or half & half taste creamy, 2% causing a sweeter taste w/less sugars. (I used to use nonfat dry milk for practicality.) Clinical trials w/3 groups tested before and after a period evidenced the heaviest coffee drinkers w/the best tests, the no coffee drinking group w/the worst tests. I tried soy milk for a creamer & couldn’t switch yet at the time. Shaking milk & half & half in a container makes a fun & yummy foam atop coffee, seems to make a need for less sweetener.