Coffee companion: how that muffin or banana bread adds to your waistline

Kathy Chapman, University of Sydney

Whether it’s a coffee in hand as we walk through the office door, or a way to beat the 3pm slump, many of us rely on our local barista to get us through our working day. Australians consume a total of 16.3 million cups of coffee each day.

But while it’s easy to adjust your daily energy intake to account for the 300 kilojoules in your small skim latte, the snack you grab on the side – or the coffee alternative – could be using up to half your daily kilojoule (kJ) allowance.

Our latest study looked at drinks and sweet snacks in five coffee chains that combined have more than 2,000 stores around Australia: McCafé, Gloria Jean’s, Michel’s Patisserie, The Coffee Club and Muffin Break. If you can’t go past the banana bread, pastries, muffins and cakes, it’s likely you’re consuming too much energy, saturated fat and sugars.

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Daily energy allowance

The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend we limit the intake of saturated fat, salt, sugars and alcohol, and eat according to our energy needs to maintain a healthy weight.

Fast food outlets, bakeries and coffee and doughnut chains in New South Wales, the ACT and South Australia are required to place the kilojoule content on their menu boards and prominently feature the average adult daily energy intake of 8,700kJ.

This figure is approximately how many kJ an “average” adult needs each day to maintain weight, but this varies according to your age, height, sex and level of physical activity. You can find the approximate number of kilojoules you need in a day by using this calculator.

Eating just 500 kilojoules extra a day for a year and not compensating by doing more exercise could mean a weight gain of almost five kilograms over a year.

Fast energy

Taking a closer look at the offerings at the five coffee chains, we found one-third of cold coffee-style drinks, two-thirds of sweet snacks and almost half the large hot flavoured drinks had more than 1,800kJ or 20% of the recommended daily intake of energy per portion.

Some sweet snacks such as Muffin Break’s double choc jumbo cookie and Coffee Club’s mudcake had more than 3,600kJ or 40% of the recommended daily energy intake.