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
Dunkin Donuts Latte	10	120
Dunkin Donuts Cappuccino	10	80
Dunkin Donuts Mocha Swirl Latte	10	230
Dunkin Donuts Brewed Coffee	10	15
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 Frappucino Blended Coffee (whip)	16	430
Starbucks Hot Chocolate (no whip)	16	330

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 amount 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 amount 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.

Comments

LuckyK7777 .

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.
- http://www.energyfiend.com/ Ted
  
  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.
- Lynn Gayle Switzer Maxwell
  
  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.
Brandon Ashley Gladeau

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
- http://energyfiend.com/ JamesF
  
  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.
peter

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/
Mark

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?
- http://energyfiend.com/ JamesF
  
  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).
Mike

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
- http://energyfiend.com/ JamesF
  
  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.
  - Mike
    
    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?
    - http://energyfiend.com/ JamesF
      
      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.
      - Johnny coffe
        
        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
megan

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!?
- JamesF
  
  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.
  - megan
    
    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?
    - JamesF
      
      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/
    - Jenna F
      
      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 🙂
- http://www.phoenixism.net/ Socially Extinct
  
  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 🙂
  - James Bragg
    
    ice cubes
    - http://www.phoenixism.net/ Socially Extinct
      
      Good luck surviving on that…”food”
    - Chris Sparling
      
      ice cubes are water. so of course they contain zero calories. but there is no drink in the world that contains negative calories.
      - Michael Teter
        
        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) 🙂
teresaa

Black coffee for me, please!