The Truth Behind Coffee Creamers

As I was grabbing for my second cup of coffee today, I realized I had once again drained the contents of my White Chocolate Mocha flavored creamer. What I didn’t realize before today was the pure amount of calories, accumulated over time, that this creamer actually had. Upon that realization, I started wondering if it was the creamer causing excess pop to my rear section and not a previous investigation about a new type of undergarment I recently investigated. (add link here)

Upon looking at the nutrition information, I realized I had been consuming 35 calories per 1 Tablespoon of creamer. I was going through an average of one huge bottle of creamer every week. At about 64 servings per bottle, that means I was adding about 2240 calories excessively to my diet!

This sparked some extra research. According to an article at fatsecret.com, using powdered creamer is about half the amount of calories as the liquid creamer. Yet, the serving size is actually only 1 teaspoon. With 64 servings, you will ultimately cut out more than half of the calories out of your favorite refreshment!

Since there is 3500 calories in a pound, if you did absolutely nothing to use up those excess calories, that means you could potentially be adding one extra pound to your waist every week and a half. That could add up to almost a full 35 pounds of weight gain by the end of the year! Scary - isn’t it?

Now I am contemplating whether or not I should give up my coffee creamer and suffer with just black coffee. Yet, I don’t care particularly for the bitter taste coffee actually has. I really do enjoy my coffee creamer. It is the luxury of the morning that wakes me up after staying up way to late at night.

• Option One: Give up Coffee all together! Yes - I said it! Give up that coffee. Don’t drink it at all. If you don’t drink the coffee you will not be tempted by the creamer. Then again… you will probably wake up grumpy, cause we all know, the best part of waking up, is Foldgers in you cup!
• Option Two: Switch creamers. Liquid creamer has an average of about 35 calories; powdered creamers have about 15 calories. You do the math. While there may be variance depending on the brand and flavor, it is still overwhelmingly true that powdered creamers have less calories and will not add as much to your bottom line. But, if you are a true fan of liquid creamer, are you willing to sacrifice?
• Option Three: Don’t worry about the calories, find an alternative to burn off those excessive calories instead. Assume that you only want to worry about the extra calories introduced to your diet by putting creamer in your coffee, and assuming that you drink about 2 cups of coffee a day with the suggested serving amount, as an average weighted person, you would need to do about 10 minutes of jumping jacks daily to counteract the effects of the liquid coffee creamer (half of that if you used powder!) that you used for your daily two cups of coffee!

So now that you know all the gory details, what are you going to do about it? I know I am not overly excited about doing about 10 minutes of jumping jacks a day, but then again, I am not so sure I am willing to give up my morning coffee either!