How much will your Double Frozen FrapMochaChino add to both your bulge and your buzz?
sources: Guardian Datablog, Starbucks.co.uk, Calorie Count | My data in a google doc | download a hires A4 PDF | additional illustration Jez Burrows
MY LOVELY BOOKS!
LIMITED EDITION PRINTS
28 Comments
An Americano is espresso mixed with water, shouldn’t it be further left? Where’s the Red Eye?
Gorgeous stuff. Often stuff like this is vague, but this is great. Keep it up.
hmmm… nice… but slightly unorthodox to have the x- and y- axes intersect at (150,175) instead of (0,0) isn’t it???
fair point. i was shooting for a cartesian grid stroke scatterplot.
This is is great but lacks accuracy.
An Americano is an espresso or a double espresso with water therefore it cannot be 2 or 3 times the amount of caffeine. However, an Americano will be processed in the body for a longer period of time because it is a larger quantity of water and will have more effect.
Yvan
Love the graphics…but I have to say, your data here are very suspect.
Espresso and brewed coffee both have virtually no caloric content. Check the USDA nutrient database; they put a cup of coffee at a whopping 2kcal. Further, you show Americano as having higher caloric content than espresso, which is absurd; café Americano is espresso with water added. In fact, the Americanos appear to have the same caloric value as a skim cappuccino.
The caffeine content is similarly wonky. 300mg in a “large” Americano, but only 150mg in a “large” cappuccino? I suspect that you’re comparing apples and oranges here; 150mg is generally two shots; 300mg would be four. The number of shots that will go into a large drink, particularly an Americano, will vary from coffeeshop to coffeeshop. If you want to know how much buzz you’re going to get, you need to ask.
Also, including “dark chocolate” in there is misleading in two ways. First, the calorie counts will vary dramatically depending on the size of the bar and the darkness of the chocolate. Hershey’s special dark chocolate bar, for instance, has 180 calories; not anywhere near the 550 your graphic implies. Further, a lot of the “buzz” from chocolate doesn’t come from caffeine; theobromine contributes substantially. Someone expecting to get about 80mg worth of buzz from a chocolate bar based on this graphic might find themselves in for a lot more than they bargained for.
What about coffee with milk. Coffee with cream. Coffee with milk & sugar?
I’m an ex-employee of mcdonalds, and (yes I’m this sad) your big mac figure is out :P
http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/food/nutrition/nutrition-counter.mcd
A Mac is 490 calories
A large coke is 210, not 310
Your fries figure looks to be something between a medium and a large
This chart is a great idea, and well executed. Thank you, you have a new subscriber!
I do have a question though: isn’t an Americano just espresso and hot water? If so, how did it end up so far to the right when espresso is so far to the left? I figured that plain old large brewed coffee would be in the coveted spot at the far right bottom of the chart.
Love it. One question though–you only have one “Energy Drink” listed on here. They’re getting so popular and prevalent–are they really ALL right around 200 calories/~140 mg of caffeine?
I love it! but there’s a couple drinks I’ve been known to get a quick buzz from that aren’t on here- Energy Shots (5 hour energy and the like) and Mountain Dew!
Shouldn’t the double espresso have /more/ caffeine than a small frappucino, since the “tall” coffee drinks at Starbucks are made with only one shot of espresso, while the medium/grande are made with two?
How can an ice coffee possibly have less calories than a double espresso or even 2 pain killers? The picture even shows it topped with cream. And I doubt that most iced coffees would contain so much caffeine. And how do 2 painkillers beat a double espresso? I call shenanigans on this infographic.
“Man has a natural propensity to question what he reads but believe anything he sees in neat infographic form.” http://gizmodo.com/5339035/how-budget-airlines-undercut-the-majors-spoiler-infographics
Well, not this time.
Great chart! Yeah, I agree, the x/y intersect was slightly jarring before I realized what was going on… ‘course the information isn’t incorrect, just that much harder to grasp…
I was surprised though to see an absence of one of the more common caffeinators, in these parts at least: Diet Coke. I’m guessing a large Diet Coke from a fountain dispenser would be somewhere near the painkillers, and a single 12oz/330mL can would be under the espresso?
Absolutely Beautiful. I would put that in all caps for emphasis but I respect it too much to resort to crass internet memes.
Nice calories illustration
Doesn’t that mean that the L americano has SIX espressos in it? That doesn’t sound right.
Plus, aren’t most drinks made with Espressos? That makes for some weird ratios between the drinks.
And rollerblading uses less calories than jogging, i’m pretty sure. though it’s better for your joints and butt.
Thanks for the chart, very informative! I was just wondering, in your calculations, does the Iced Coffee (regular or small) include the usual fancy swirl of whipped cream topping, or is it just cold coffee with milk?
Thanks,
M
Why does a double shot of espresso have more than 2.5x caffeine than a single shot?
Also iced coffee is brewed the same way as regular coffee. It just has lots of, well, ice. Hard to think it would surpass regular coffee in caffeine content.
How does a double shot of espresso have 100mg of caffeine and a small mocha have have twice the caffeine? A small mocha is never made with more than 2 shots espresso…
thanks all for your comments
re: the great Espresso vs Americano contraversy
Technically an Americano is a shot of espresso with hot water added. So why big difference in caffeine content?
EnergyFiend. has a single shot espresso at around 58 mgs up to 185mg. I used the lower figure.
http://www.energyfiend.com/caffeine-content/espresso
StarBucks rate their own Venti American as having 300mg of caffeine. Maybe that’s why they taste so good.
http://www.starbucks.co.uk/en-GB/_Favorite+Beverages/Beverage+Nutrition.htm.
Hence the disparity in the diagram.
misinformation is ugly
The scales should be at left and lower margins. As is, they create arbitrary quadrants and miss the chance to embphasize the point (0, 0).
Interesting, now I can clearly see what gives the most bang for the “buck”.
What energy drink to you refer to, I’d be very interested.
If I consider the axis are labeled “caffeine” and “calories”, the diagram should only used the first quadrant of a two dimensional graph. This design is counter intuitive since there aren’t negative values of caffeine or calories.
This is great. Always helpful for reinforcement of the concept that espresso does not have “more caffeine” than coffee. Water that moves through grinds at 15psi does NOT pick up caffeine like american drip coffee does.
Not sure how a long black can have more caffine & calories that a double shot esspreso, as a long black is a double esspreso with added hot water 9does the water contain caffine & calories?)
I love your work!!! This graph needs Mountain Dew though. :)
Love your visualizations. This one has me scratching my head, though (maybe too early in the morning? ) – But I don’t understand the correlation between caffeine and calories. Does caffeine intake burn calories?
3 Trackbacks
[...] Caffeine and Calories | Information Is Beautiful, i love info-graphics [...]
[...] mkandlez over at Information is Beautiful recently asked, “How much will your Double Frozen FrapMochaChino add to both your bulge and your buzz?” [...]
[...] 07.09 The Buzz vs The Bulge Caffeine vs Calories » email me » back to davidmccandless.com homepage [...]