Americans are drinking about the same amount of coffee as they did 15 years earlier but getting nearly 40% more calories from it, and the biggest reason is non-dairy creamer rather than sugar, according to a Tufts University analysis of national dietary survey data published online October 19 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Researchers at Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy analyzed eight consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003–2004 to 2017–2018, covering 30,459 adults aged 20 and older, each of whom completed two 24-hour dietary recalls. The abstract reports that total coffee intake by weight was essentially flat, moving from 373 to 378 grams a day, about 13 ounces or 1.67 eight-ounce cups, while energy from coffee rose from 43 to 60 kilocalories a day, a statistically significant trend.
By 2017–2018, about 41 grams of each day’s coffee intake consisted of additions. Dairy milk was the most common addition by weight at 21.4 grams a day, followed by non-dairy creamer at 8.1 grams and sugar at 4.4 grams. Measured in calories, however, non-dairy creamer contributed the most, at 19 kilocalories a day, ahead of sugar at 16 and dairy milk at 11. According to the university’s release, creamer’s calorie contribution had been about 7.7 kilocalories a day in 2003, and its weight more than doubled over the period, from 3.37 to 8 grams a day, while sugar, dairy milk and sugar substitutes showed no statistically significant change.
Non-dairy additions as a group rose from 3.65 to 10.5 grams a day, with non-dairy milk climbing from 0.27 to 2.45 grams. To attribute calories accurately, the team broke pre-mixed coffee products down into their ingredients using the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Database for Dietary Studies, ScienceDaily reported. Lead author Yongyi Pan, a doctoral candidate at the Friedman School, said that “Non-dairy creamers can be high in saturated fat, which is calorie dense,” which may explain the rise. Senior author Fang Fang Zhang is the Neely Family Professor at the school.
The study also found that coffee consumption was higher among men, non-Hispanic White adults and people with higher incomes, that adults who slept less or worked longer hours drank more coffee, and that coffee intake was similar among people with higher and lower overall diet quality. Intake was estimated from each participant’s two 24-hour recalls, and the authors analyzed the trends with survey-weighted regression and analysis of variance, according to the abstract.
Why it matters
Coffee itself has been associated with various health benefits in observational research, as the paper’s background notes, but what goes into the cup is a separate matter. The authors write that additions can increase intake of added sugar and saturated fat. The difference per person is 17 kilocalories a day, but the trend reflects a shift in habits across the population of coffee drinkers and in the products marketed to them, with creamer’s popularity growing as consumers seek plant-based or dairy alternatives, according to the release.
For clinicians and dietitians, the finding points to a question worth asking: not just how much coffee a patient drinks, but what is added to it. The authors say that knowing more about what people actually consume is the basis for understanding the links between nutrition and health, and these data suggest that a focus on sugar in coffee may be missing the larger contributor.
The caveats
This is a serial cross-sectional analysis of self-reported intake, which the authors note is subject to measurement error from day-to-day variation in what people eat and drink, though they say they took steps to improve the reliability of the estimates. The data end in 2018 and do not capture more recent changes in coffee products or habits. The study describes trends and cannot link coffee additions to health outcomes. It is peer reviewed and published ahead of print; neither the university release nor the abstract states a funding source.
This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a qualified clinician. Corrections: email the editor using the address on the Contact page.
