The Skinny at Starbucks

I suggest not ordering it at Starbucks, certainly, regardless of what you call it. I don’t think their bitter brown beverage qualifies as coffee.

Since I don’t know the lingo I always order a small coffee of whichever flavor I like that they are serving that day. The other advantage is that you get it from the cashier so there is no wait, just like at McDonalds

Sugar-free syrup?! Yuck! What about people who can spare the calories but want nonfat milk for heart health or other reasons? I know they could order differently, but I hate to see artificial sweeteners promoted as healthful.

And as a former Starbucks barista, I think this will be pretty confusing. First of all, plenty of people already say “skinny” and most of them are only referring to nonfat milk, not sugar-free syrup. Second, when I worked at Starbucks, only vanilla and hazelnut syrups came in sugar-free versions, so unless they have severely cluttered the drink preparation area with two of each flavor, “skinny” will mean sugar-free syrup for vanilla but sugar syrup for cinnamon dolce.

If I remember correctly, Starbucks’ regular syrups are made with sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup, so in my opinion they are better for you than the artificial sweetener syrups.

Maybe at least the publicity will do something about the diving stock price and help all us former baristas still holding onto a few shares from the employee purchase plan.

Why give it up? Order a tall, and you’ll be getting 90 calories instead of 135, will save some money (besides, can you really drink all that coffee before it gets cold?), and will be getting your calcium, too.

Over 90% of that “extra 130 calories daily” that the author refers to is from non-fat milk (and the other calories are from the espresso, which would also be present in regular coffee). I’m not sure what was implied by the word “extra”, but I don’t think 130 calories worth of non-fat milk everyday is worrisome. In fact, it seems quite healthy to me. I’d be more worried about the twelve to thirteen-hundred dollars that you’re going to spend buying Starbucks brand instead.

Starbucks is wonderful, skinny or fat. But the only sane person who would drink it every day, the price notwithstanding, is Morgan Spurlock. Save it for a treat!

This is news? We’ve been ordering skinny coffee in Seattle for years. I moved here in 1992 and my Starbucks order was a tall skinny latte. And that’s how I’ve ordered it when I go home to the east coast.

OMG no more grande no whip nonfat sugarfree skinny lattee

Well…I’m skinny and the Starbucks baristas, if I’m not at the stores I visit regularly, often automatically assume I WANT a skinny latte! In fact, I always ask for “whole milk.” But thanks for the compliment!

One of my local coffee shops offers a “Cafe No Fun” which is a decaf latte with skim milk. I think it makes the point quite nicely, that for some of us the latte or cappuccino is the treat ending to a tasty dinner (despite my daily coffee consumption, I have perhaps two lattes a month), and if you drink enough of them that you have to count their calories, maybe you need to rethink your habits.

I’m glad you’re making the switch to plain coffee as a daily habit and hope you’ll still let yourself latte up on special occasions.

Myself, I’m a ‘real food’ advocate. My coffee is fresh-ground with a splash of cream and a touch of raw sugar, and it tastes much richer to me than a cup with a calorically equivalent amount of non-dairy lowfat creamer and refined sugar.

You’ll also save money. I love the online calculators where they tell you what the difference is, economically, between your daily Starbucks trip and drinking office coffee or brewing your own at home and having a thermos handy. When I realized that my daily trips across the street to Prima Tazza were costing me over a thousand dollars a year (2 trips a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, 2.50 a cup), I got into the habit of taking a thermos to work pretty quick ($8 a pound, half a pound a week, nominal increase in electric and water bill), and drinking office coffee if I forgot it (free, but often vile). For the first year, every day I didn’t go across the street I put the difference in money in a jar. Every month I put the jar’s contents in my savings account, and at the end of the year I bought a nice present for myself and spent the rest on my family to give them a nicer Christmas than I’d been able to afford for a few years.

Maybe you could find a way to bank the difference in cost each day and see how much you can save.

Thanks but the Starbucks drinks are totally expendable. These Michael Pollan dicta are really circulating. They merit some criticism. If I ate only what my great grandmother recognized as food, ugh. No more Pad Thai or mangos! In fact, not many vegetables or fruits (lots of overcooked or picked cabbage). No seasoning except for salt. And no more pork, even if I hunted down a wild pig. Further, I’d have to farm (not garden) and raise a family of thirteen kids as my great grandparents did to work off all that butter and schmalz. Another piece is Pollan’s criticism of science. Nutrtional Science or “Food Science” is often an oxymoron. Really lousy research with poor experimental design and questionable statistics. Pollan is too smart to join the peasants with their pitchforks skewering good science. What Pollan is smart enough to do is to talk about how we, consumers, can evaluate scientific claims as pseudo or substantial.

The staff at my local starbucks is regularly confused when I order a ‘large coffee, please’. English is my first language; I’m born/bred in my local area, so it shouldn’t be an accent problem.

I think they just expect me to say at least a dozen more syllables to order a drink. Or maybe a customer saying please is so unfamiliar that it throws them for a loop.

I’m SO happy I didn’t choose to become a coffee addict! I rely on my own bodily functions to awaken in the morning and boy does it feel good. :-)