Category: Nutrition

When thinking about calories in coffee, the best approach is to accept that coffee is nothing more than a glorified flavouring for your drink. Sure, it is a super flavour, jam-packed with stimulants, vitamins, minerals and a thousand different chemical compounds, but from a food calorie perspective, it is just a flavouring. In other words, coffee itself does not contain any meaningful calories!

Calories in Coffee typically come from Milk and Sugar

Thought of in this way, the real question becomes, how many calories are in the drink to which you are you adding your coffee flavour? Add it to plain water, and you get a zero-calorie Long Black. Add it to a caramel milkshake and you get a 500-calorie Frappuccino. Yes, both of theses drinks are called “coffees” at your local café, but minus the coffee flavour they are completely different.

When making coffee at home, it is common to add about 60ml of full-cream milk and one teaspoon of sugar to a cup of coffee-flavoured water. This converts a zero-calorie coffee and water drink into a 55-calorie coffee, water, milk, and sugar drink. Each teaspoon of sugar adds 16 calories and each 60ml of milk adds about 39 calories.

Wondering what the difference between adding skimmed, lite, soy, and full-cream milk to coffee is? Apart from reduced calories, skimmed milk has the benefit of being low in saturated fat and high in protein. Soy lattes contain about 10% fewer calories than regular lattes.  Check out our milk comparison post for a detailed insight.

Calories at the Cafe

Let’s talk about calories in café coffee. Lattes and cappuccinos, flat whites and espressos, life in Australia would not be the same without them. Here, we are talking about the kind of coffee you get by forcing hot water through tightly packed ground coffee beans, rather than the instant powder or drip filter type.

The good news is that coffee made in the espresso style (when water is pressured through a tight crush of ground coffee beans) is much more nutritious than coffee made in other ways. This is because many small bits of the coffee beans make it through the press basket and into the drink.

Those bean bits hold significant amounts of B vitamins and magnesium in addition to the caffeine and other interesting chemical compounds. If you have the choice between espresso style coffee and others, choose espresso for this reason (and the flavour of course!).

What about calories? What is the most, and least, calorific type of espresso coffee? Here’s your list, taken straight from our website, in order of least to most:

Long Black

The Long Black is made by pouring a double shot of espresso over hot water. This is the coffee you choose when you want coffee and nothing else, but you want to sip rather than downing it in a gulp or two. Single shot or double shot, your afternoon pick-me-up will add no calories to your daily intake.

Espresso

The purist’s choice is straight-up coffee with just a few ml of water to qualify it as a drink rather than a food. It is a Long Black without the water. You will add just 2 calories per 100ml to your diet each time you knock back one of these head-ringers. By the way, if you are drinking more than 100ml of espresso at a sitting, perhaps consider Zen meditation practices.

Why does an espresso shot contain calories, whereas a long black with the same amount of espresso does not? Well, in fact the long black does indeed contain calories, but they are diluted by water to the point of negligibility, volume-for-volume.

Macchiato

“Macchiato” means “stained” in Italian, in this case the stain is a spot of foamed milk in your espresso. The idea of the milk stain is to take the edge off the bitterness by adding a touch of sweetness without the use of flavour-killing sugar. Opting for the milk stain will add 11 calories to the espresso to yield a total of 13 calories per 100ml.

The caveat with macchiatos (and every other classic coffee), is that the café that you patronise might have a quite different concept of what a macchiato should be. In some cases, the drop of milk which makes the stain could be more like a scoop from a soup ladle, so beware!

Cappuccino

Did you know that the name “cappuccino” is derived from the name of a brotherhood of catholic monks (the Capuchin friars) in Italy? No, these monks did not reverently brew and perfect coffee in remote mountaintop monasteries, but they did wear brown habits. Their clothing was a type of brown colour, the same as a cappuccino top. Mix espresso, hot milk and steamed frothy milk to make the brown drink known as cappuccino. Cappuccinos contain 52 calories per 100ml.

Latte

Lattes are apparently different from cappuccinos because of the amount of milk foam they contain. Lattes have about 2cm of milk foam on top, compared to about 1.2 cm of milk foam on cappuccinos. That difference translates into a whopping two calorie difference between the two. Lattes contain 54 calories per 100ml.

Flat White

The difference between a latte and a flat white is in the texture of the milk and foam, apparently. That said, we do not have any generally accepted agreement as to what that exact difference is, except to say that it is somehow qualitatively different. Nevertheless, from a calorie perspective there is no difference. Flat whites, like lattes, contain 54 calories per 100ml.

Mocha

The mochaccino is a hot chocolate with a shot of espresso. This is the most calorific of the classic espresso-style coffees. It is made by adding cocoa powder to the Cappuccino formula. Mochas contain 71 calories per 100ml. Add sugar to a mocha for an even bigger calorie blast!

Blended Ice Coffee

Blended ice coffees are basically just coffee-flavoured milkshakes made with a wide range of flavourings and toppings. It is common to find variations on a blend of flavoured ice-cream to which syrups and a shot of espresso are added, topped with whipped cream. These calorie monsters typically contain 96 calories per 100ml. If you are in the habit of thinking of them as coffees, please stop. Drink them as you would a milkshake, very rarely, as an extraordinary treat.

Calories in other Coffee

The above list is made up of just the “classic” espresso-style coffees in their “pure” forms. That means they have no added sugar and are made with regular fat cow’s milk. In practice, just about every café has its own distinctive variation to the formula for the classics, and you can order from a wide range of substitute milks and sweeteners and toppings. This means that your regular Double Skinny Soy Macchiato with organic Hazelnut Syrup has a calorie count far different from the coffees listed here. Always read the calorie or kilojoule label and bear in mind that your individual barista may have a heavy hand with the syrup and cream!

Conclusion

Coffee on its own has negligible calories, but most common coffee drinks are relatively high in calories. The calories in coffee mostly come from added milk, sugar, cream, and other flavourings. When ordering coffee from cafes, be aware that ice-blended coffee beverages contain about twice the calories of regular coffees. Espresso shots, long blacks and macchiatos are low-calorie drinks whereas cappuccinos, lattes and mochaccinos are high calorie.

When you are controlling your calories, which is the better choice: full-cream milk, “lite” milk, or skimmed milk? Is it true that reduced-fat milk is just watered-down whole milk? Before you rush in with a quick “Its obvious!” answer, let us take a closer look at these three options…

How do they make reduced fat milk?

In pre-industrial times, skimmed milk was simply whole milk whose cream was removed by skimming off the top after it was left to settle in a pail. We do things a bit differently these days!

To make reduced fat milk, pre-processed whole milk from a blend of different cows is spun around in a specialised centrifuge. The centrifugal force breaks the milk into its separate components of water, fat, carbohydrates, protein, minerals, and vitamins. The manufacturer then reprocesses the separate ingredients in different batches and proportions to make different types of dairy products.

If you have read our post on panela, you will have found out that centrifuges are incredibly useful food-processing machines.

Reduced-fat milk is theoretically just recombined whole milk, without all the fat added back.

Whole milk has a generally accepted fat content of 3.5%, but of course in nature this varies immensely depending on the cow breed, the cow’s diet, the relative water content, and a hundred other input variables. Non-standard inputs are anathema to industry, so manufacturers therefore carefully standardise the fat content of designated full-cream milk at 3.5%.

Fat in Full-Cream, Low-Fat (Lite) and Skimmed Milk

Different countries have various regulations which determine what can and cannot be called “skimmed milk” and “reduced fat milk”. In Australia, milk must have a fat content of less than 0.15% before it can be marketed as Skimmed Milk or “Fat-Free”.

Reduced Fat Milk must have at least 25% less fat than whole milk.

Low-Fat Milk (also marketed as “Lite” or “Light” milk) must have less than 1.5% fat by composition.

There is more Sugar in Skimmed Milk

Back up a little and think about how they make reduced fat milk: the fat is physically taken out. What happens when you take one specific thing out of a mixture? Everything else, including the sugar, becomes relatively more concentrated! It is like simmering sugar water on your stovetop to make syrup.

A typical full-cream milk is 4.7% sugar, whilst a typical skimmed milk is 4.9% sugar, compared to 4.8% for low-fat milk.

This sugar difference (about 4%) has a noticeable effect on the taste of skimmed milk compared to full-cream milk.

In addition to there being more sugar in reduced fat milk, there is also more of everything else (except for fat!) like protein (mainly in casein form), minerals and vitamins.

Full-Cream Milk has way more calories

Full-cream milk has 45% more calories than skimmed milk, as a direct result of there being about 95% more fat in it. Low-fat milk by comparison has about 65% less fat and 30% less calories than full-cream milk.

A single small glass (250ml) of full-cream milk makes up about 8% of a 2,000 calorie daily diet, whereas that same glass of skimmed milk would comprise just 4% of the same diet.

Lots of Saturated Fat in Whole Milk

Everyone has probably heard that saturated fats, as opposed to unsaturated fats, are bad for you if eat too many. Saturated fats have been linked with a broad range of “first-world” health problems like heart disease. The World Health Organisation recommends that less than 10% of total energy intake should come from saturated fats.

Milk fat is typically 60% saturated fat! In a typical full-cream milk product, 2.1 grams of the 3.5grams of fat per 100ml is saturated fat. This means that drinking more than two small glasses of full-cream milk will quickly bring you up to the daily recommended limit. You would need to drink about 45 of the same glasses of skimmed milk to hit that same limit.

There is saturated fat in full-cream, lite, and skimmed milk, but in widely differing quantities.

Of course, there are always dissenting voices supported by studies like this one which say that the saturated fat in milk has no adverse effect on health. As with many contentions related to health and food, it may be many years before we reach the unassailable truth.

Read the label!

If you are serious about nutrition, it is a good idea to base your milk choice on what you see on the food label. The nature of milk means that there is an enormous amount of variation between types and brands of milk. Manufacturers have a lot of leeway when it comes to what they put in and take out of the product known as milk.

Other than the broad percentage-based government guidelines, reduced-fat milk could be anything from 75% full-cream to 0% full-cream. Lite milk could have as much as 1.5% or as little as 0.15% fat – the difference is a factor of 10!

Conclusion

Finally, a simple conclusion: Skimmed Milk beats Lite Milk beats Full-Cream Milk because less calories, less saturated fats, more nutrients.

Reduced-fat milks do not taste as good as full-cream milk because they have less fat in them, not because they are “watered-down”. You will get excellent nutrition from skimmed milk, don’t worry.

Yes, it was kind of obvious.

Check out this video from Dairy Australia about how milk is manufactured:

Since both Diet Coke and Coke No Sugar are sugar-free and contain less than one calorie, are they really different? Let’s take a closer look at both drinks to find out if so and which one is healthier.

Different Histories

Malcolm Fraser was the Prime Minister in 1982 when Diet Coke was launched. In 2017, Malcolm Turnbull was the Prime Minister when Coke No Sugar was released. Maybe Malcolms are good for low-calorie colas?

Diet Coke replaced the Coca-Cola company’s first-generation diet cola, named Tab. Coke No Sugar replaced Coke Zero in Australia and became Coke Zero Sugar in some other countries (not to be confused with Coke Zero).

Diet Coca-Cola was launched hesitantly due to fears that customers would reject anything other than “the real thing” being called Coke. Up until 1982, there had not been another “Coca-Cola” besides the original since 1886. Diet Coke does not taste like regular Coke, but it became massively popular because people began taking calorie control seriously.

Diet Coke’s success led them to launch many other Cokes, like Cherry Coke, Coke Ginger and Coca-Cola With Energy. In 2005, they began to sell Coca-Cola Zero to appeal to people who wanted the regular Coke taste with the Diet Coke calories. They ran into a problem though: many people did not realise that Coke Zero was sugar-free, just like Diet Coke. In response, the company tweaked the recipe again and renamed the product to either Coke No Sugar or Coke Zero Sugar, depending on which market it is sold in.

Ingredients compared

The ingredients in both drinks are remarkably similar. This may come as a surprise to people who have tried both, because the two colas taste quite different. The key flavour differences are a company secret, but we can take a side-by-side look at the published ingredients:

The three major ingredient differences are that Diet Coke, compared to Coke No Sugar (or Coke Zero Sugar), has 1) more “Coke Secret Flavour” by volume, 2) a preservative (sodium benzoate), and 3) has citric acid instead of sodium citrate.

Why does Diet Coke need a separate preservative, whereas Coke No Sugar does not? Perhaps this is because the sodium citrate (Food Acid 331) and phosphoric acid (Food Acid 338) are sufficient to do the job, whereas the citric acid (Food Acid 330) and phosphoric acid combination in Diet Coke is not. Phosphoric acid, citric acid, and sodium citrate are all food acids which have a dual function of adding flavour and preserving the drink. Maybe the sodium citrate/phosphoric acid mix just works better?

Diet Coke has about 13mg of caffeine per 100ml, compared to about 10mg in Coke No Sugar.

Calories in Coke No Sugar

When it comes to calories, Coke No Sugar has a slight edge over Diet Coke: 0.33 calories per 100ml compared to 0.35 calories per 100ml. Most of the calories in both drinks probably come from the food acids. Bear in mind that at the level of less than one calorie per 100ml, both drinks may realistically be called zero calorie because the human body is going to draw no usable calories at that dilution.

If Diet Coke has more secret Coca-Cola flavour in it than Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, why does it taste less like classic Coca-Cola? Probably because there are different Coke flavour recipes, and Coke No Sugar’s version hits the mark closer than Diet Coke’s.

In Australia, both Coke No Sugar and Diet Coke are sweetened with Aspartame and Acesulfame Potassium. This sweetener blend is different in other countries.

Diet Coke Marketing

The flavour of Coke No Sugar is clearly different from Diet Coke by design. Coke No Sugar was introduced to appeal to the people who wanted a sugar-free Coke but did not want to drink Diet Coke.

The three main reasons for not wanting to drink Diet Coke are that:

1) it does not taste like the original Coke,

2) it has the word “diet” in it, therefore carries a certain social stigma, and

3) it is packaged in light colours and advertised as being “Coke-lite”, lending a certain airiness to the brand.

To overcome these reasons, Coke No Sugar

1) is remarkably close to the original Coke flavour,

2) does not feature the “D” word, and

3) is packaged in dark colours and advertised as being “proper Coke”, lending a certain heaviness/solidity to the brand.

Which is Healthier, Diet Coke or Coke No Sugar?

Before answering the question, which is healthier, Diet Coke or Coke Zero Sugar, let us first and foremost acknowledge that neither are healthy! A quick rundown of the reasons why:

Aspartame may be Bad for You

Aspartame is one of the most intensely studied food chemicals in the world. It is a man-made chemical, first coming out of the lab in 1965. It then took over 15 years to gain regulatory approval by the FDA, mainly because many scientists just could not believe that it couldn’t have some sort of harmful effect! One of the biggest concerns was that the molecule in some ways looks like other molecules which cause brain tumours.

If you read the nutrition label of foods which contain aspartame, they will often include the warning “Contains Phenylalanine”. Phenylalanine is a by-product of aspartame and should be avoided by people with Phenylketonuria (PKU), especially pregnant women.

The other sweetener in both drinks, acesulfame potassium, is also 200 times sweeter than sugar and is also the subject of academic debate as to whether it causes cancer.

That said, many studies have shown that aspartame is harmless, even though many scientists today are still studying it closely. The jury is still out!

Carbonated Water might cause hunger

A study in 2017 showed that the carbon dioxide in carbonated water stimulates the release of ghrelin, the so-called “hunger hormone”. If true, this means that fizzy drinks make you want to eat more than you should.

Food Acid might weaken bones and teeth

Phosphoric acid, citric acid and sodium citrate have all been implicated in harmful effects on human teeth and bones. Older women who are at risk of osteoporosis should really avoid eating/drinking too many food acids.

Diet Coke compared to Coke No Sugar, choose which?

A side-by-side comparison of both products leads us to the conclusion that Coke No Sugar is the better choice. Coke No Sugar contains less sodium than Diet Coke (4.2mg/100ml compared to 15mg/100ml). It also contains less caffeine and it does not have any sodium benzoate in it. As a psychological bonus, Coke No Sugar contains fewer calories than Diet Coke.

Finally, it tastes better too!

They are growing in popularity, so let’s take a closer look at cashew nuts nutrition, calories, health benefits and disadvantages. Are there any general reasons to choose cashews over, say, almonds? Why don’t nutritionists go “nuts” over cashews?

Cashew apples look different

Cashew nuts are the seeds of the tropical cashew apple tree, native to South America. The apples, unlike the apples most of us are familiar with, do not have cores with seeds in them. Instead, the seed (cashew, or cashew nut) grows in a tough shell attached to the bottom of the apple! Although flavoursome, The apples don’t usually make it out of their local markets because they bruise and spoil quickly.

Cashew nuts, on the other hand are exported far and wide. Australia has its own small cashew industry, but most of the cashews in our supermarkets are imported from South America, South East Asia, and Africa.

A hard nut to crack

The cashew seed has a double-layered shell which is extremely hard to open. A nasty mix of several different plant acids lies squeezed between the shell layers, ready to squirt on anyone who unwittingly gives it a crack. This acidic liquid is the same chemical found in poison ivy, so getting the cashew shell juice on your skin is painful and damaging.

The processors first boil and dry the seeds before carefully cracking them open with a hand-operated nutcracker.

Workers use their hands to gently pluck just the kernel of the seed from the meticulously cracked shell to reveal the cashew nut we are familiar with. Thereafter, the nut is usually skinned, roasted, and salted before making its way into a package ready for the supermarket. It is possible to buy unskinned and unsalted cashews, but these are much less tasty and therefore unpopular.

When the product is boiled or steamed most of the caustic juice runs off. Even so, acid burns and chronic skin irritations are a common occupational hazard for the workers who process cashews. There has been growing activism by consumers and the Fair-Trade movement to protect vulnerable workers from exploitative cashew producers.

The next time you see a recipe calling for “raw cashews”, allow yourself a chuckle.

Cashew Nut Nutrition benefits

Cashews are highly nutritious and packed very densely with calories. The popular roasted, salted kind weighs in at an eye-watering  616 calories per 100g! For comparison, something like a bacon burger with cheese has 177 calories per 100g.

The reason for the high calorie count is fat (oil): cashews are half fat, half everything else (carbohydrates, protein, fibre, minerals, vitamins, etc.). This is not surprising because most nuts have a similarly high fat to weight ratio, for example macadamia nuts have 724 calories per 100g and are 75% fat.

Like many of the popular nuts, cashews are high in minerals like zinc, magnesium, and selenium. Magnesium is especially important for body weight control because it is used when the body regulates metabolism and fat deposits. They are also a good source of plant protein, coming in at 17g per 100g. Cashews contain vitamins in abundance, especially vitamin E. Plant fibre holds everything together in a honeycomb nut structure, which helps with good digestion.

Almost as good as carrots

No outline of cashew nuts nutrition would be complete without noting that cashews have excellent stores of carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin. Carotenoids are a class of organic pigment which give carrots and other orange/yellow vegetables their colour. These wonder chemicals are believed to prevent some cancers and promote eye health as we age.

Cashew Nuts Nutrition Disadvantages

Unfortunately, it cannot be said that cashew nuts stand out from other nuts in terms of micronutrients. They are not particularly healthy when compared to almonds, pecans, walnuts, or pistachios, so there is no reason to choose cashews other than the flavour. Studies like this one show that most other nuts outperform cashews from a nutrition perspective.

Super high fat content

The main disadvantage of cashews is the high calorie count, which can punish unsuspecting dieters. Chicken and cashew stir-fry is a popular dish with a deceptively high calorie count, thanks to the cashews. If you are sharing a plate of cashew chicken with someone, we suggest that you focus on the chicken, and let the other person eat the cashews! Remember that cashews like many nuts are very “moreish”, so it is easy to keep eating well after you hit the calorie target.

You will hear people say that the oil/fat in nuts is the good kind, they are right, but it is still oil.

If you eat too many cashew nuts, you will gain weight quickly.

Gassy Nut

Some people are prone to experiencing bloating and gassiness after eating cashews. This is because of the triple-whammy of high fat, high fibre and high tannin content. They just take a long time to be digested, all whilst releasing their tannins. Tannins are antinutrients, you can read about what we think of antinutrients here.

Kidney shaped, kidney beware

Try to avoid cashews if you have kidney stones or a propensity to produce them. This is because cashews have a high mineral (especially phosphorous), and oxalates content. An alternative renal-friendly nut would be macadamias because they have a much lower phosphorous content.

Allergies alert

Whilst the obvious disadvantage of tree nuts like cashews to people with nut allergies need not be mentioned in this article, it is worth pointing out that cashews contain a rather special allergen called anacardic acid (this is a key reason they are cooked during processing). Anacardic acid, also known as urushiol, in even tiny amounts can cause anaphylactic shock in sensitive people.

Storing Cashews

The next time you see cashews in the supermarket, look closer. You might notice that the plastic package feels a bit different to regular bags, and you will often find a little “oxygen absorber” sachet nestled inside. This is because oily nuts like cashews have a chemistry with common plastics: they tend to, kind of, dissolve into each other. Without going too deep into the chemistry, lipid oxidation is a common problem with stored nuts, which combined with free monomers in plastic packaging, can result in unwanted combination reactions.

Storage harms cashew nuts

Unlike many other nuts, cashews are sold skinless and they contain relatively high amounts of plant acids. Without their protective skin, they are exposed directly to packaging plastic and oxygen, so it is no wonder that reactivity is an issue. Storage conditions affect cashew nuts nutrition more than nuts with shells and/or skins.

If you store cashews in a low-grade plastic container for a few weeks or months, you may find that the cashews taste like plastic! (Don’t eat them if they do).

Cashew Nuts Nutrition Conclusion

Nuts in general are nutritious and should be a moderate part of every balanced diet, however, our inescapable conclusion is that you can do better than cashew nuts!

When we compare cashew nuts nutrition to other nuts, we see that they are mediocre to sub-par. They are just as fattening yet less nutritious than alternatives like almonds. Their physical form makes them prone to over-processing and spoilage. Many of the cashew nuts for sale in our stores are harvested and processed in India and Vietnam in ethically questionable conditions.

It is a flavoursome choice for sweetening anything but is panela healthier than sugar? The answer is yes, but not by much.

To understand why, first we must think about what sugar is. Sugar is the name we give to a family of sweet-tasting chemicals which are extracted from plants like sugar cane, sugar beet, corn, and sugar maple. Examples are sucrose, fructose, and glucose. In pure form, these chemicals form colourless or white crystals when not dissolved in water.

Centrifugal Sugar

In the “olden” days (before the mid-19^th century), almost all sugar sold was brown or black because it was not pure. Back then, when people said “sugar”, they meant brown sugar.

The brown/black colour comes from all the non-sugar parts of the plant, combined with sugar to form a sticky, thick syrup called molasses. Molasses has a distinct earthy/burnt/bitter taste which flavours anything it is added to.

Nowadays, we have the technology to separate the sugar from the molasses effectively and efficiently, using a centrifuge. Most of the sugar sold today is refined centrifugal sugar, produced at vast industrial scale.

A centrifuge is a machine which spins a pre-processed sugar-molasses solution fast enough so that pure sugar crystals are separated from the molasses. The sugar crystals are collected and further refined to produce common white sugar, a singular product which is sold as 99.5% pure sugar.

This high purity is a big reason for sugar’s bad reputation for being a massive source of “empty calories” because, besides calories, there is practically no other nutritional value. Less-pure brown sugar has more nutritional value because it includes molasses along with the sugar.

Panela is sugar

The word “panela” is simply the name given to the type of sugar made in some parts of South America. In other parts of South America, this same sugar is called rapadura, chancaca, atado dulce, or piloncillo. Panela has been made in the region for about 500 years, and it continues to be made the same way to this day.

Panela imported from South America is cane sugar (sucrose), just as the normal white and brown sugar grown and sold in Australia is. The key difference between panela and regular sugar (besides the price) comes from the way it is made. Unlike centrifugal sugar, panela is made the pre-19^th century way, by simply evaporating the water.

Other so-called non-centrifugal sugars from other parts of the world include jaggery and gur (Asia), papelon (Caribbean), tang (China), and many others. They are basically all the same thing.

Difference between white sugar and brown sugar

If the only difference between white sugar and brown sugar is that brown sugar has more molasses in it, does that mean that panela is simply normal brown sugar? If it is, why would anyone fork out extra money to buy it instead of Aussie brown sugar?

The answer to that question lies in a not-so-secret secret of the sugar industry: brown sugar is normal white sugar, with some molasses splashed onto it. It is far more efficient for the sugar company to make white sugar then add varying amounts of molasses to it in order to arrive at the desired colour and taste combination, rather than make separate batches of less-refined sugar.

Crack a typical brown sugar crystal in half and look closely, you will see that it is white inside!

Unlike typical brown sugar, panela is brown all the way through, so it contains a higher proportion of molasses and tastes much more “molassesy”. Panela is a less-pure sugar than normal brown sugar because it is made the old-fashioned way, without a centrifuge.

So, is Panela healthier than sugar or not?

Panela and other non-centrifugal sugars naturally contain molasses as well as sugar, so by default they are theoretically healthier because molasses contain trace minerals and vitamins whereas sugar is just that: sugar.

Pure molasses itself is high in vitamin B6, magnesium, manganese, and other minerals.

However, from a practical standpoint, there is almost zero nutritional benefit to opting for panela instead of normal white sugar. This is because the actual quantity of molasses you will consume by substituting panela for regular sugar is so small as to be insignificantly beneficial for your health. It differs by brand and even by batch, but the actual molasses content of panela is usually about 5% by volume. Nutritionally, this is an insignificant percentage considering that sugar is not a product that is consumed by the bowlful.

You would need to eat 20 spoons of panela to get the nutrition of one spoon of molasses. One spoon of molasses would provide about one fifteenth of your recommended daily amount of vitamin B6.

The amount of extra minerals and vitamins you get from a teaspoon of panela stirred into your coffee compared to a teaspoon of regular white sugar is so tiny as to be virtually undetectable. If you are eating panela to get the nutritional benefit of molasses, you’re doing it wrong. Just buy a jar of molasses instead.

As you can see from our calorie counter database, there is no meaningful difference in the calorie count of panela and regular sugar. Most types of sugar pack about 385-395 calories per 100 grams, (about 18 calories for a teaspoon) including both centrifugal and non-centrifugal types.

Panela, like white sugar, is “empty calories”.

The difference is taste

When it comes right down to it, the only sensical reason to use panela instead of other sugar is taste. Panela tastes much more interesting than regular sugar because it is thoroughly imbued with molasses.

Not all molasses tastes the same, because not all sugar cane tastes the same just as not all apples taste the same. In the same vein, molasses taste different depending on how they have been made, how long they were boiled for, what temperature they cooled, what water if any was used in the process of evaporating the sugar syrup to make the solid block of panela.

On the other hand, all white cane sugar tastes the same because it is 99+% pure.

Something about the South American cane and their age-old process makes panela tasty. It is so tasty that in South America, people call home-made lemonade “panela water” (aguapanela), probably because the panela flavour dominates the lemon juice.

Beware misleading marketing

Perhaps the key takeaway is that panela tastes better than regular white or brown sugar (assuming you like the taste of molasses), but it is just as lacking in nutrients. Do not fall for the marketing ploy which leads one to believe that panela is healthier than sugar, because it simply isn’t!