Drinking on Duty: Coffee

Besides body armor and a handgun, coffee is the most important piece of equipment for cops. Working weird hours and having other commitments during the off hours force many cops into a vicious cycle of staying awake and sleeping, alertness and drowsiness. Considered the world's most popular drug, caffeine is a stimulant that increases heart rates, mental focus and alertness, while decreasing sleepiness or drowsiness. Caffeine even has withdrawal symptoms, which leads many to claim they are 'dependent' or 'addicted' to coffee. Today more than ever we are overwhelmed with  energy drinks. Red Bull is the most widely known, but everyday new types of energy 'shots', gums, and pills are in convenience stores. Despite the market saturation, coffee is still king.

But is drinking coffee healthy? It depends on how you make it. The simplest rule I can come up with is, 'The blacker the better'". Many coffee drinks are laden with high amounts of sugar and dairy in the forms of sugary syrups, whole milk, and whipped cream. (If there is a second rule it is no whipped cream ever). Coffee is a drink with almost unlimited variations. You can get flavored ground coffee, add syrups, add sugar free syrups, use skim, whole, 2%, soy, or no milk at all. The drinks also come in a variety of sizes and can have other additions such as cookies, chocolate shavings, whipped cream etc. That makes getting accurate calorie counts difficult since many of your dedicated coffee shops have baristas who create and tailor each individual cup of coffee to the customer. That being said, let's take a look at some popular drinks at Starbucks. All nutrition information is from their site starbucks.com. All sizes are 'Venti' or 20oz. drinks because nobody drinks tiny coffees.

A little coffee, a lot of garbage.

Café Mocha with 2% milk and whipped cream: 410 cals, 18g fat, 55g carbs 17g protein.

Having the same drink substituting skim milk and omitting the whipped cream will dramatically reduce the calories and fat.

Café Mocha with skim milk: 280 cals, 3g fat, 54g carbs 17g protein.
What's the worst thing you can get on the menu? The white chocolate mocha. Made with 2% milk and whipped cream this drink comes in at 580 cals, 22g fat, 79g carbs and 19g protein. For some reason the 'iced' version is even worse adding another 30 cals, 2g fat, 6g carbs.

So what do you get? Of course you can always get brewed coffee and just avoid adding all the other extras yourself. If that's too boring, get an Americano which is just espresso mixed with hot water. It gives you a lot of kick with no calories. By the way, a Café Americano is purportedly from American soldiers in Europe adding hot water to their European coffee drinks to replicate the coffee they were accustomed to back home. So if you order one of these you show your love from freedom.

 

'Merica!!!!