12 Unhealthiest Drinks You Should Think Twice About Ordering At A Bar

Frothy cocktails and mixed drinks that promise all the sweet, buzzy fun of a dessert and a weekend getaway are often the least healthy options on the menu. You knew that already, though; you've seen enough tiny umbrella temptations and luscious craft quaffs to understand that nutrition isn't always a consideration in the beverage world. But certain selections call for a second look when it comes to your health and well-being, something best done ahead of time so you know what you may be getting yourself into.

Knowing which sips to steer clear provides a definite advantage when bellying up to the bar to whet your whistle. We've arranged a written bar tray filled with a flight of the unhealthiest bar drink orders around. The more obvious cream-based recipes are peppered by a surprising suite of unexpected candidates, simple swigs that pile on the sugar, and calories for unsuspecting bar flies. While you can make substitutions at home for healthier versions, ordering at a bar doesn't always offer the same flexibility. Take a gander at our unhealthy bar drink round-up and see if your favorite is on the tab.

It may sound like a snowy night in St. Petersburg, but a White Russian is actually a coffee-infused warm-up that makes a soothing nightcap after an evening out, with two different kinds of alcohol and a so-called "splash" of heavy cream to temper the sizzle. Though the flavors may blend beautifully, the calorie count and fat content make this cozy cocktail a real buzzkill when it comes to your fitness goals.

The White Russian recipe included on the Kahlua website is a simple one-part-each formula ratio of liqueur, cream, and vodka. Keeping the quantities at 1 ounce per liquid, one round will net you 100 calories from the coffee liqueur and the heavy cream, and 66 calories from the vodka if your bar uses Absolut. That totals 266 calories for a single 3-ounce beverage. The fat content amounts to 10 grams total, seven of which are saturated, and the sugar content from the liqueur comes to 14 grams. It's easy to see why this glass filled with drinkable calories, fat, and sugar will put a damper on your gym efforts in the morning.

Essentially a melted boozy milkshake, a mudslide is the go-to sweet swizzle for drinkers who'd rather not taste the alcohol in their glass. Read the ingredients and check up on the nutrition facts, though, and you might reconsider your need to hide the sting of spirits under a slew of sugar and fat in order to avoid the self-care compromise they result in.

A basic mudslide recipe calls for 1 ounce each of vodka, coffee liqueur, and Bailey's Irish Cream, plus an additional 1.5 ounces of heavy cream, and a bit of chocolate for garnish, though some bars may opt for a squeeze of chocolate syrup instead. The nutritional math on all that comes out to 454 calories, 20 grams of fat, and around 9 grams of sugar. It's easy to see that this mudslide is a nutritional disaster that you should swerve around to avoid a bar top mistake you can see coming from a mile away.

Bananas and chocolate whipped up in a rum-based concoction sounds like a tropical getaway in a hurricane glass, which is exactly the vibe a Funky Monkey is aiming for. Elements like that are high in sugar and fat, which may taste groovy while you're swaying from the treetops at your local watering hole, but they're sure to swing your healthy habits in the wrong direction.

A common recipe for this not-so-simple bar cocktail includes three types of liqueur — rum, banana, and crème de cacao — sloshing about with coconut cream, dairy cream, and whole milk, plus a real banana tossed into the blender. The grand total in calories for this potion? In the neighborhood of 500. The sugar is a whopping 32 grams and the fat total of 16 grams is enough to make this monkey fall right out of the tree. It's a nutritional misstep you can avoid by sticking to a simpler concoction with clear mixers like soda or sparkling water rather than creamy add-ins and a trio of spirits.

A Long Island iced tea doesn't cloud the issue of unhealthy cocktails by filling the highball glass with milky mix-ins or whipped cream weirdness. It's a recognizable swirl that makes regular bar-goers eyes widen whenever it makes the happy hour markdown menu. But this deceptively semi-transparent creation conceals a quantity of alcohol and calories that make it clear you're not doing your plans for longevity any favors.

The bar artist crafting your Long Island iced tea recipe will be serving you 1 ounce each of vodka, gin, rum, tequila (otherwise known as the Four Spirits of the Barpocalypse), with orange liqueur, and cola stirred in for delicious good measure. The resulting tonic may only fill your glass with 102 calories and 5 grams of sugar, but when your judgment goes fuzzy and you order one or two more, the non-nutritional nonsense adds up. To keep your post-work meet-up from turning into an unhappy hour, order a softer sip or consider making a single glass last throughout the evening.

One of the most representative drinks from the tiki age, a classic piña colada gets the luau shaking like few other choices on the menu. This most tropical concoction calls for pineapple juice, coconut cream, and a generous pour of island rum, a liquor made from sugar cane itself. Doesn't that sound like a luscious libation? It sure does. But that's just the kind of thinking that will get you into nutritional trouble in a heartbeat — a racing heartbeat, that is, thanks to the colossal sugar content.

How much do you trade out in calories, fat, and sugar content by consuming this glorious glass? How about 200-plus calories, 10.5 grams of fat, 9.25 of which are saturated, and 9.25 grams of sugar. Just one colada can cause a lotta peña for your health objectives. It may be one of those drinks with island appeal, one that you can enjoy while lounging by the sea. But the nutritional setback you'll experience afterward is no day at the beach. Try a juice spritzer instead to keep the bad stuff at bay.

Who wouldn't love to slide into a booth at their favorite hot spot and sip on a Painkiller after a grueling week in the work world? One strawful of this richly colored nectar crafted of rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, and coconut cream and your soul sets sail for more pleasing climes, even if you're just hopped up on a barstool watching the evening crowd gather. That is, before the sugar content sends your insulin on a roller coaster ride that makes your sweet escape a dicey affair.

How much nutritional pain does a typical Painkiller cause? Try almost 300 calories, with 10 grams of fat, 8.7 of which are saturated, and 13.7 grams of sugar. That's a lot of baggage to take along with you on your bar-fueled escape. You might as well plan on rowing your boat home to work off the impact of this ill-conceived cocktail. Go with a more healthful juice and tonic spritzer if you'd rather call an Uber and save yourself a nutritional heartache in the morning.

No fiesta is complete with a pitcher of margaritas on the table, whether you're celebrating restaurant-style or throwing your own festive blow-out. It's the tart and tangy temptation that takes lime juice into the stratosphere, zesty enough to catch you in the salivary glands, but sweet enough to smoothing things over with your taste buds. If only the nutritional information were as celebratory as the flavor.

While a classic margarita may go well with your meal of bar bites, you're actually adding significant calories in the form of sugar, sugar, and a little more sugar. A margarita from Applebee's, for example, includes 300 calories and 31 grams of sugar to your total intake for the evening. Order another, and you've essentially consumed a meal's worth of calories through your beverages alone, and just about a day's worth of sugar. Consider sharing a single margarita with a friend and sticking with club soda and lime water for the rest of the evening to keep the nutritional impact much more manageable.

Picture yourself on an island shore with your toes in the surf and the sunset in your line of sight. If you have a drink in hand that's sure to satisfy your thirst, it's probably a frozen strawberry daiquiri, one of the juiciest rum-and-fruit drinks imaginable. But inside the glass is an unimaginable storm of sugar-rich ingredients that'll bring your ship of good health crashing to shore in an instant.

When the blender stops blitzing the usual frozen strawberry daiquiri recipe and your mixologist hands you the finished drink, you're actually getting a brain-freezing 250 calories and 5 grams of sugar — and that's without factoring in your appetizers. Sure, it looks lush and pretty in the glass, like a grown-up Slurpee that puts you in a good mood. But something spritzy with a few muddled strawberries in the bottom is a better request from your cabana attendant if you're hoping to head home with your nutritional self-esteem intact.

Whoever came up with the idea of adding chocolate to a martini was a mixologist's dream come true, but a nutritionist's nightmare. Martinis were always the high-class cocktail, ordered by fictional spies, real-life dignitaries and other high-falutin' figures who seemed to know the right way to drink. By muddying the waters with dessert ingredients, the martini has become a super-sweet option that's likely to give your calorie counting a swift kick in the gut.

The barhand's secret formula for a chocolate martini features 2 tablespoons chocolate syrup decorating a glass filled with 2 ounces each of vodka, crème de cacao, and Bailey's Irish Cream, plus shaved chocolate for garnish. That comes out to a cool and cruel 500-plus calories, 8 grams of fat, and 10 grams of sugar. If that sort of cocktail calculation shakes and stirs your healthful sensibilities, maybe stay away from the chocolate martini and make space for something easier to digest.

Also known as a simple rum and Coke, the Cuba Libre elevates the street-level charm of the classic cola with a thoughtful splash of rich rum and a squeeze of citrus. It's an easy order for new drinkers who aren't sure what they like but know that they want to start tasting the spectrum. If you fit this description, try not to get too attached to this fizzy concoction, or your internal systems might come to resent you.

Cola is sugary enough as it is without adding sugar cane-based rum to the shaker. Ask your barista to put these two together in a glass using 1 ounce of rum and 3 ounces of Coke, and you've rung up and you'll be guzzling down a seemingly innocent 100 or so calories, but they come with 10 sugar, a quantity that clearly puts you into overconsumption territory. Cutting back on the health-centered detriment might mean opting for a simpler rum-based drink, one with a mixer that doesn't stir up trouble.

How quaint and harmless an old fashioned seems when you eye it up on the list of house specials on the barquee at your favorite haunt. It sounds like the romantic sort of drink movie stars in the Golden Age of Hollywood might serve at their cocktail parties. If you're keeping an eye on your sugar intake, though, you might want to idolize a different era and leave the old fashioned in the past.

The formula for an old fashioned is so straightforward, it practically stands up without assistance: bourbon poured over a sugar cube, mixed with simple syrup, and dressed with a maraschino cherry. You may have noticed a lot of sweet elements in that line-up to balance out the heavy smoke of the bourbon. The resulting impact on your nutritional needs is X calories and X sugar, quite the tally for a glass-filler with a name that hearkens back to an age of simplicity. But your pancreas knows how complex the process of breaking down all that sugar is, and it is not impressed.

When it comes right down to it, Irish coffee is really just coffee given a whiskey jolt to make the situation saucy. It sounds like the right order when you're sunk shoulder-deep in a booth at your favorite pub having a rousing round of trivia with your pals. If you break it into its components, however, you find out it's not the best friend your physiology has ever encountered.

If your barkeep sticks with a standard Irish coffee recipe, heavy cream doles out a dollop of unwanted calories to muddy the nutrition in your so-called coffee cocktail. That's on top of what comes from the tablespoon of Bailey's Irish Cream, 4 ounces of Irish whiskey, and 2 teaspoons of brown sugar swirling around in your glass. The nutritional math here totals up to about 475 calories, 10 grams of fat and 10 grams of sugar. If all you wanted to do was spice up your coffee, ask for a sprinkle of cinnamon and just a splash of whiskey instead.

There's enough of a health challenge in consuming alcohol to make pretty much any mixed drink a nutritional question mark. But additional ingredients that make cocktails enjoyable often include sugar and fat, which increase caloric intake as well as causing potential health challenges. Several of our choices were obvious nutritional no-nos, drinks that are built around a creamy, dessert-like concept. Some were a bit more restrained but contained sugar and calories despite their more diplomatic design scheme.

We used the nutrition facts listed on bottle and carton versions of the ingredients to determine how many calories there were in the quantities used in each drink recipe, as well as the fat and sugar content where those elements were present. The inclusion of multiple liquors in drinks like Long Island Iced Tea were also a factor for the compounded health impact of the extra alcohol. We also opted for more common beverages that are usually found on drink boards and happy hour menus in bars and restaurants around the U.S. to make the information relevant to the average cocktail fan.