When I can talk for hours about Portland's great local coffee and cool microbreweries, I can't resist to raise a concern about some intolerably unhealthy sweetness level in some of the beverages. Everytime I forgot to say "LESS SUGAR," the rest of my day will be a bad turbulence in my tummy - yes, that kind of sweetness that you think gonna give you instant diabetes.
First, let's examine this jar of coffee. I swear it's huge! At least you can drink 5 *NORMAL* cup of coffee and it's still sweet enough if you add ice as much as 20% of the volume you have in your cup. And where is it come from?
A grande Starbucks Java Chips Frappucino. More precisely, 3/4 of the grande frappe.
So in a beautiful grey day of Portland, I ordered my coffee, chatted with the server, and made the most fatal mistake of that day: forgetting to say "LESS SUGAR" for my order. Voila, what I got is a *NORMAL* sweetness level according to that server (or maybe any other server in particular places in particular country). So what happened next was I almost thrown up, and after couple of sips I gave up drinking it and bought a cup of regular Stumptown instead. But... I brought my frappe home.
And to satisfy my curiosity about my normal sweetness level, I made another coffee and added it to the grande frappe. It was 5 spoons of coffee with 16 ounces (yes, a full medium cup) of water. And I mix them. The result: it's still too sweet. But it's tolerable enough because I can add ice blocks as I drink that later. So, moral of the story: Even though I have added amount of water DOUBLE the original volume, American Starbucks is still too sweet (for me).
And today, I made the same mistake again. But, this time, with bottled juice. (How am I supposed to say "less sugar" to something bottled??). Anyway, this is a really healthy juice: 4 fruits blend, no GMO, not from concentrate, gluten free. So it's supposed to be awesome!!
But again, I got an instant "ding" in my head as I started sipping. Disaster!
As I flipped the bottle and see the sugar level, and it's well explained why the sweetness level is crazy: this 450ml juice contains 44 grams of sugar. In other words: 11 teaspoons*) of granulated white sugar!! While, according to AHA (American Heart Association), the maximum intake of sugar for woman is only 25 grams per day, and for man 37.5 grams per day.
Anyway, just a random statistic based on this page:
"According to data from the U.S. in 2008, people are consuming over 60 pounds (28 kg) of added sugar per year and this does not include fruit juices (1). In 2008 the average intake was 76.7 grams per day, which equals 19 teaspoons or 306 calories. According to this study, sugar consumption went down by 23% between the years 2000 and 2008, mainly because people drank less sugar-sweetened beverages"
Meanwhile, a *not so* recent opinion in Jakarta Post raised a concern about the opposite trend growing in Indonesia: more sugar! You can see the opinion here, written by the vulnerability assessment officer for the UN World Food Program (WFP) in Indonesia and East Timor in 1998-2002.
So, think your own sweetness level, and have a good day, sugar!
*) one teaspoon of white granulated sugar equals to 4 grams of sugar
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