"coffee drinks" news and stories

Our new monthly installment features a portion of the popular guide, Eat This, Not That! in hopes that it will help you make better choices at casual and fast-food establishments.

I recently found myself in line at a local coffee shop behind a very nutrition-minded customer. She was asking the barista about the various food choices -- and she knew what she was talking about: Which fats were good or bad, how much sugar is reasonable, etc. That's why I couldn't believe her drink order: some kind of whipped mocha frappe concoction. All her caloric diligence went right out the window. I didn't want to be rude, so I held my tongue. But the woman made a classic mistake: She was watching what she ate, but not what she drank. The damage: more than 400 additional calories, guzzled from a plastic cup.

The fact is, a shocking number of the calories we consume at coffee joints doesn't come from the food. It comes from the coffee, and that's a shame. A cup of coffee in its raw, natural state contains only 5 calories, and coffee consumption has been linked to diminished risk of Alzheimer's [disease], better brain function, and even better memory. Coffee, in its purest, blackest form, is good for you. But too much of our coffee has been razzle-dazzled into sugary, fatty, pastrylike beverages: Instead of seizing the day with caffeinated focus, we're losing our grip on our diets.

That said, you can get your morning java boost without the accompanying belt expansion, if you know what to look for -- and what to avoid.

After the jump, an overview of the best -- and worst -- coffee drinks in America.

There are approximately 76 gazillion recipes for coffee drinks (I just Googled, trust me), and I'm sure all of us (all of us that drink coffee anyway, I like tea) have our favorite concoctions that we make, stuff we add to coffee to give it that added zip.

RecipeZaar has this recipe for Spiced Christmas Coffee, which I thought would be great to make as your family gathers around the holidays to party and wrap presents. It's not alcoholic though! It includes a teaspoon of brandy, but I assume you can leave that out for the kids (the pic is from another RecipeZaar coffee recipe).

I'm not a coffee guy, but I'll try this. Without the whipped cream though. I don't like whipped cream on my coffee and tea drinks.

Have you ever had this happen to you? You love a certain food or flavor for years, and then one day, for some reason, you're completely turned off by it and don't want to have it again? That's what is happening with me right now with mocha.

More specifically, mocha drinks. As I've mentioned here many times, I don't really like coffee, but I like drinks that have a mocha flavor in them. I bought Nestle's Ice Java chocolate mocha flavored syrup for a couple of years. I really liked it, and bought it again this summer. About two weeks ago it suddenly started to taste...um, really bad to me. It didn't taste right at all. I don't know if they changed the formula or if my bottle had gone bad (the date was fine), but it suddenly tasted really sharp and bitter and disgusting. They don't make the other flavors anymore (at least they don't sell them in my area).

But the mocha problems don't end there.

That's coffee milkshake. So, by law, you cannot have any other flavor of milkshake until midnight tonight, OK? The food police will be watching.

If you don't want to go the Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts route, how about making one of these Coffee House Milk Shakes from Kraft or maybe one of these basic Coffee Milk Shakes For Two. Making-Coffee.com has a Coffee Milk Shake recipe that includes two eggs and ginger biscuits.

And if you're wondering what a milk shake is exactly, check out Wikipedia. I just wish we could settle on whether it's one word or two.

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