"coffee shops" news and stories

Starbucks is the latest chain to try to jump on the no-trans fats bandwagon, trying to demonstrate to customers how much they care about health and nutrition. Starting this week, approximately half of the stores in the US, including those in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, will have zero trans fats on their menus.

The company says that they have been planning the switch for two years now and that their nationally distributed pastries, primarily seasonal items like the Gingerbread loaf cake, are already trans-fat free. The rest of their pastries are baked by regional bakeries, which Starbucks contracts to provide pastries for their stores. These pastries vary from region to region, as do the recipes for them, so not every supplier has yet made a switch, but Starbucks seems to anticipate that it will not be long before they do.

So, if you're not located in one of the aforementioned areas of the country, does that mean you need to worry about trans fats at Starbucks? Not where drinks are concerned. According to the nutritional information on their website, very few of their drink products contain trans fats and those that do have only a very minimal amount. The pastries, on the other hand, vary widely by region, but judging from a random sampling of regional nutritional data (offered by zip code on the Starbucks website) your best bet will be a muffin or loaf cake if you want to minimize your trans-fat intake without cutting out pastries all together, at least until your area is declared trans-fat free, too.

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Every fall, Starbucks adds their Pumpkin Spice Lattes to their lineup, much to the delight of the many fans of the drink. This year, it is joined by another seasonal drink: the Maple Macchiato. The drink is much like the company's caramel "macchiato," which is a latte with vanilla and caramel sauce added to it, only it uses a maple syrup sauce instead of the other flavors. It even has a little maple drizzle on top.

The drink has been test marketed in Canada and in some parts of the US, so if you live in the North East, you may have sampled the maple-goodness before. It is sweet, satisfying and very evocative of fall. All stores should have it in stock this week. Expect to see some seasonal maple-flavored pastries, as well, as the 'Bucks tends to pair their new coffee drinks with a similarly flavored muffin or scone.

We love coffee - a sentiment that most bloggers probably share - but you cannot subsist on coffee alone and the pastries at coffee shops often leave much to be desired when it comes to flavor, as well as a little extra that we don't desire around our waists. With coffee and better-for-you options already on our minds, the new granola bars from Caribou Coffee caught our attention right away. The bars come in two coffee flavors - Vanilla Latte and Chocolate Mocha - but have only as much caffeine as decaf coffee, despite their taste. Each bar has about 140 calories and 3 grams of fat. Caribou says that they're a good source of calcium and whole grains, too.

Both flavors of bar are available online, so you can pick them up without trying to hunt down a store that carries them.

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The news isn't that the Taiwanese government just realized that excessive caffeine can cause symptoms such as upset stomach, dizziness, anxiety, bad moods and trouble at work after a month-long study. Don't people know this already?!?!

The news is that coffee shops in Taiwan have added caffeine-content advisories to their menus with that warning from health officials. It's a color coded system: coffee drinks with more than 200 mg of caffeine get a red mark, caffeine levels of 100-200 mg get yellow, and drinks with less than 100 mg get green.

Starbucks has two new flavors rolling out to its US stores this summer, both based on tea and not on milk/cream, like their other frappuccinos. The first flavor is pomegranate, which is a blend of juice concentrate and green tea. The second is a tangerine-lime flavor, a blend of tea, tangerine and orange juices with a hint of lime. There is even a new "tea blended" category on their website, but no drinks have been added to it as of yet.

It's nice to see something a bit lighter on the menu, not to mention that this will be a big plus for non-dairy drinkers. The drinks sound extremely refreshing, but they also sound like a rerelease of the old Tiazzi and Tazoberry drinks, which were fruity tea frappuccinos as well. Of course, they didn't come in either of these flavors - though citrus, berry and mango all saw some time on the menu board - but the principle is the same.

As a big fan of those older drinks, I'm definitely glad to hear that these are being added to the summer lineup at Starbucks.