Unhealthiest Store-Bought Coffee Drinks

The real debate for the mobile coffee drinker isn't whether to go with canned vs. bottled coffee; it's whether to trust coffee companies to take your health into consideration when providing a ready-to-consume coffee drink that doesn't require a barista or a drive-thru. Even if you love seeing your name on a disposable cup as you head off to start your day, grabbing pre-made coffee drinks when time is short is a tempting second-best option that can put a real dent in your nutritional hopes and dreams. This is especially true if you're used to going light on the creamer and the fancy flavorings.

If you opt for basic cold brew, you'll be quaffing a store-bought coffee drink that only has a temporary impact on your energy level, thanks to the caffeine content. If you rock something more deluxe like the prepared store-bought bottled or canned coffee concoctions on the list that follows, you're taking your healthy philosophy into your own hands. The unhealthiest store-bought coffee drinks end up being a load of sugary, fat-laden, high-calorie buzz makers that may taste delish but they're anything but nutrish.

No need to hit Starbucks on your way to work when you can have bottles of your favorite Caramel Frappuccino iced coffee stashed in your office mini fridge. The big drawback of these pre-customized caffeinated chugs is not being able to adjust the sugar and cream to fit your fluctuating sensibilities. If you're looking for a slightly more nutritious coffee treat but decide to stick with the store-bought version out of convenience, you'll be consuming whatever content Starbucks has decided counts as a serving. There's no shifting to a sugar-free pump instead of the full-bore version; you're in for the whole ride once you snap the cap.

Thanks to the prefabricated brew, one of the shadiest things on the Starbucks menu doesn't occur onsite at the coffee shops but in the coffee sections of well-stocked grocery stores around the county. There may only be six ingredients on the label, but the combination carries 300 calories per bottle, 5 grams of fat, three of which are saturated, and a nutritionally nonsensical 46 total grams of sugar. It's the same amount of sugar as you'd get in a Mountain Dew, though the soda has little more than half the calories and no fat. Essentially, you're drinking syrup with coffee added in this Starbucks selection.

The fact that Twix Iced Coffee Latte drink featuring Victor Allen's coffee is named for a candy bar should be your first clue that this isn't going to be a nutritious beverage. It certainly sounds delicious, like an extra-sugary twist on a caramel mocha with a buttery cookie-based element added to the formula to get the balance right. Everyone knows Twix in the freezer is one of the finest frozen candy bar treats ever imagined by humans, but blitzing those ingredients up and adding coffee and cream isn't any better for your body than downing an actual candy bar. In fact, in some ways it's actually worse.

Just how questionable is this chilled, candy-flavored coffee? Very — a single bottle sinks 220 calories into your daily trove, with 10 milligrams of cholesterol included. The real disappointment here is the sugar, a colossal 40 grams in a single bottle. You only get 24 grams of sugar in two actual Twix bars. Whether you favor the left Twix or the right Twix, Twix Iced Coffee Latte isn't even close to being the "right" coffee drink if you value your health.

Roasted chocolate beans, roasted coffee beans, roasted peanuts — every bottle of Snickers Iced Coffee Latte is a bonafide roast-fest. But if you've learned anything about a product that incorporates a well-known candy into a relatively innocent base like coffee, it's that all the healthful simplicity goes right out the window (or the bottle) in favor of attracting lovers of luxurious coffee experiences. Snickers may not be the height of elegant sweets, but it's popular enough to draw the eyes of convenience store shoppers rushing for gas and gum in need of a caffeinated pick-me-up. Nutrition never even enters the picture.

How not-good could a coffee drink inspired by Snickers be? Even at 220 calories, the inclusion of both milk and cream results in less fat than expected at only 2.5 grams, an encouraging surprise. But the 40 grams of sugar is shocking enough to make your system blast through the caffeine buzz and head for the crash before you have a chance to get your bearings. Adding a real Snickers to your coffee would only bring in 28 grams of sugar, and you'd never make a silly nutrition-compromising move like that. Likewise, you should keep as far away from Snickers Iced Coffee Latte as possible.

Those clever creamer creators finally got ahead of the game by introducing a pre-made coffee in cans and cartons presumed to be comparable to the refrigerated bottles that made the company famous. With International Delight Mocha Iced Coffee, java lovers get the jump on their day-starter by skipping the coffee maker altogether. A pour of this pre-mixed blend puts the sugary stuff and the caffeinated stuff in your mug in a single splash. But you won't be getting a mindful mix from a producer known for replicating candy and dessert flavors in its efforts to flavor homemade coffee.

This company may provide some of the most popular coffee creamers on the market, but its pre-made coffee drink eliminates your ability to control the amount of creamer you pour into the cup, which means you can't control the calories, sugar, or fat either. And in a mug of this tempting treat, you'll be adding 180 calories to your daily tally, with 3.5 grams of fat and a sludgy 29 grams of sugar. Adding a serving of the company's Hershey's Chocolate creamer to make your own mocha only drops 5 grams of sugar to your cup, a much more desirable figure for coffee drinkers with a taste for thoughtful coffee indulgence. So, though it may seem convenient to get your coffee and your creamer in a single carton, getting a beverage lets you tinker with nutrition too isn't possible.

There's no getting away from pumpkin spice season, and if you're going to chug a mug, you might as well pick up a bottle from the grocery store and make it in your own kitchen. Starbucks Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte puts the power of the pumpkin in your hands, letting you doctor it however you like, though it arrives on your counter with everything you'd get from your barista if you winked and said, "PSL, please" as you tap your gift card at the register. Unfortunately for your systems, that means you're downing a load of sugar and fat along with the charming cinnamon-led spice blend, an essence that tells you not only are leaves falling, but your nutritional goals will be falling right along with them.

If you choose to play barista at home, beware of this potent pourable potable. A serving cranks out 230 calories, 3.5 grams of fat thanks to the inclusion of skim milk in the recipe, and a dizzying 36 grams of sugar that keeps the spice in Pumpkin Spice Latte under control. There's no chance of ordering non-fat milk, so the fat stays. And the sugar content is higher than a two-pack of Twinkies, which seems a bit excessive. So much for using Splenda to health up your morning.

Yes, the premium ice cream wizards have stirred up a little trouble in the pre-made drink aisle with Magnum Double Caramel Iced Coffee. This luscious but ill-advised ready-to-roll coffee creation may promise to taste as delicious as the frozen bars that inspired it, but it also comes with the nutritional caveat of a dessert-on-a-stick with sugar and cream as featured ingredients. What else would expect from a food producer that favors pure enjoyment over physical enhancement?

With a bottle of this lushly sweetened bean brew, you can jot down a voluminous 240 calories in your daily consumption notebook; take note of the 3 grams of fat as well. And if you can keep writing after you've consumed the jitter-inducing 41 grams of sugar, you may just realize what an error in judgment you've made with this purchase. An actual Magnum bar has just 30 more calories while cutting the sugar to 25 grams. Sure, the fat jumps up to 17 grams, but you're eating an ice cream treat, not drinking a coffee beverage. Forget toasting to good health with this melted bottle of dessert in your shaky, sugar-addled mitts.

Dunkin' isn't exactly racing to beat the band to a healthy store-bought coffee beverage. The fast food pastry maven is more concerned with capturing hearts and dollars than helping out in the gym. If Dunkin' doesn't rope your sweet tooth with dastardly donut, it's more than likely to hook your coffee-loving heart with a bottled Dunkin' French Vanilla Iced Coffee, available at grocery and convenience stores so you can enjoy one even if you don't have a real Dunkin' location near you. But enjoying one and maintaining your health are two wildly different concepts where this beverage is concerned.

Down a bottle of this caffeine-rich and you're drinking in 280 calories, empty except for the 7 grams of protein that finds its way into the formula courtesy to the skim milk and cream — but it's equal to the 8 grams of fat, so the two pretty much cancel one another out. And you haven't even found out about the 40 grams of sugar yet, though by now you've probably guessed that was coming. Skip the Dunkin' bottled iced coffee and make your own at home. Maybe you'll have enough left in your nutritional bank account for a sweet treat after dinner.

Because there's just not enough caffeine in a can of Monster, the energy drink company thought it best to combine its base formula with coffee and café flavorings to produce Java Monster 300 French Vanilla Coffee. The name alone makes it sound like a Franken-beverage, a mash-up of all the most questionable parts of an energy drink and a coffee concoction, caffeine equivalent to a triple shot served in a can so you can drink it on the go-go-go. It's full of perk and pep, even if nothing else favorable is included in the can. 

Beyond the buzz, what comes in an over-tall can of this crackling coffee creation? The numerology on the label predicts an intake of 200 calories, 3.5 grams of fat and 10 milligrams of cholesterol to complicate the caffeine scenario. And that says nothing of the 32 grams of sugar, which only adds a frenzied energy roller coaster to make matters even shakier. It's almost as much of the granulated sweetener as you'd get if you ate a packet of Pop-Tarts, and nobody with regard for their well-being would do something like that. So, why would you do something like a Monster Java coffee drink? Easy answer: You wouldn't.

Adding protein to anything seems to be the chic way to make an otherwise unhealthful product attractive to the fitness set. Bolthouse Farms Perfectly Protein Mocha Cappuccino gets in on the trend by dropping 13 grams of protein into an otherwise ordinary chocolate-coffee mix-up. In a more thoughtful version of this store-bought coffee chugger, there'd be alternatives to milk and sugar to trim the excess. Bolthouse goes all the way by keeping things real — as in real milk and real cane sugar in a beverage that's a real bad move for your fitness aspirations.

If being walloped by 320 calories in a single-serving coffee drink isn't a deterrent, maybe the one-two punch of 6 grams of fat and 30 milligrams of cholesterol will be. Barring those two barriers to making favorable nutritional choices, the mind-blowing 52 grams of sugar has to be enough inspiration to ditch your detrimental decision. The American Heart Association's recommended daily intake for a 2000-calorie diet is only 36 grams of sugar for men and 25 grams for women; you'll be consuming double or more by the time you drain the bottle. Bolt from Bolthouse Farms and cultivate better nutrition, pronto.

There's no reason not to expect a dessert-like experience drinking a can of Bones Coffee Company Holy Cannoli. The promise of creamy flavors from a classic Italian pastry blitzed into a highly-charged caffeine-filled fluid is the stuff of coffee lovers' dreams. Whether you choose to snap a tab and start your day with dessert or save the glug for later in the day and enjoy a can as an after-dinner treat, the result is the same. Your nutrition takes a cannoli-sized hit that's so easy to see coming, it's actually printed on the label via the illustration of Don Corle-bones puffing on the Italian pastry in place of a stogie.

The smack-down your cells will take from this concoction comes in the form of 210 calories per can, delivering 6 grams of fat and 15 milligrams of cholesterol. The 28 grams of sugar that come along for the ride are unwelcome visitors for a coffee drink that doesn't let you have a say in how sweet things get. The flavor may be as close as you can get to tasting cannoli filling in your coffee cup without dipping the real thing in there, but your coffee drink shouldn't count against your dessert allowance. That's a nutritional flub even java fiends can avoid.

It sounds so innocent, so joyful, doesn't it? Well, don't be fooled by the innocuous name. Happy Mocha Latte is the tiger kitten of the store-bought coffee jungle, all fuzzy fur and dewy eyes hiding teeth and claws that aim to shred your nutrition goals to bits by the time you drain the can. Even the subdued hues and minimalist design of the label hint at a simplified drink that doubles as an innocuous treat. You're too slick to fall for a trick like this, right? Right?

Would it help if you knew a can of Happy Mocha Latte contains 230 syrupy calories with 4.5 grams of fat contributing to the nutritional mess? How about the 15 milligrams of cholesterol sloshing around beneath the tab? If neither of those are cautionary enough to keep you from spending your money on this dietary fail, maybe the 38 grams of sugar will do it. That's more than you'd get in a Hostess Ding Dong and twice as much as a Hostess Cupcake. A few extra grams of protein isn't worth all of that. Your physiology will be a whole lot more content without Happy included among your coffee happenings.

If you've never considered dropping a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup into your coffee to give it a jolt of candy-coated flavor, International Delight will introduce you to the concept with its Ready-to-Drink Reese's Iced Coffee. With peanut butter providing creamy-nutty flavor paired with chocolate like no one but Reese's can do, the flavor is bound to captivate candy fans who also love a good blast of roasted broth in the morning. But this coffee is more of a can-don't of a can if your nutritional numbers mean anything to you.

A 220-calorie can in vibrant Reese's orange will net you 5 grams of fat, along with 20 milligrams of cholesterol. If that isn't enough to make you reconsider your options, the 36 grams of sugar is likely to do the trick. A bonafide peanut butter cup candy bar only carries 22 grams of sugar, but you're probably not going to dunk one in a cup of coffee and eat it for breakfast. Even if you thought a bottle like this would make a great afternoon pick-me-up, put it back down. Your health is more important.

There's a pretty obvious approach to identifying the unhealthiest coffee drinks on store shelves and in gas station refrigerators: High calories plus generous fat content plus too much sugar plus high sodium equals not good. The caffeine is a given, considering these are coffee drinks and that there's no disclosure for the content in each product. The other elements are add-ins that can be controlled with handmade coffee, whether crafted at home or whipped up by a professional coffee artist. These bottles are a coffee situation that doesn't know the meaning of "non-fat milk, no sugar."

Anything near the 200 calorie mark and up was considered a contender for the round-up. Second-tier considerations of fat and sugar followed, though some of these items have surprisingly contained fat content for their generous use of milk and sugar. The few that utilize cream also contain cholesterol. These supremely convenient beverages are clearly made for enjoyment rather than nutrition, which means reading the label is must before deciding on a store-bought coffee drink if you're compelled to give them a try.