Understanding the caloric content of your beverages is an effective strategy to avoid undesired weight gain and other health problems. This is particularly important since it's quite easy to consume a high amount of calories through drinks without even realizing it.
One drink that many coffee drinkers wonder how many calories are in it is espresso
A 1 ounce shot of espresso only has around 1 calorie in it. This calorie comes from the protein and fatty oils that are extracted from the coffee beans when the drink is made. The amount of calories in espresso can increase quickly when milks, creams, or sweeteners are added to make it into a drink such as a latte, macchiato or cappuccino.
In this article I’ll talk about where the calories in espresso come from, how many there are in espresso based drinks such as lattes and cappuccinos, and give you a few tips on how you can lower the amount of calories in your homemade espresso drinks. Let's get into it!
What is Espresso
Espresso is a type of coffee that is served in small shots and is made by forcing pressurized hot water through very finely ground and tightly packed coffee beans. Although espresso is made from the same types of beans as coffee, its unique brewing process makes it much stronger, richer, and higher in caffeine than regular drip coffee.
What are Calories?
A calorie is a unit of measurement that tells us the amount of energy in food and drinks. If you want to get technical, the real definition of a calorie is “the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree celsius.”
With so much talk about weight loss these days, especially here in the U.S. where I live, calories are many times looked at as a negative thing that we are supposed to consume as little of as possible. When the truth is that our body needs the energy from calories to function well and survive.
The only time calories actually lead to weight gain is when eat more than we burn off throughout the day. Which leads to these excess calories being stored as fat.
For example, if you were to eat 2,000 calories in a day but only burn off 1,900, the 100 calories that weren't used for energy would be stored as fat.
Having some fat on our bodies is important because fat allows us to store energy for later use. The health problems and extreme weight gain come when someone is eating more calories than they burn off regularly and developing a lot of energy storage in the form of fat.
Why Espresso Has Calories in It
Because all types of coffee, including espresso, are made mostly of water, they have very few calories in them. In fact espresso is only made up of 7-12% coffee, the other 88-93% is just water.
The handful of calories that are in espresso come from the 7-12% of the drink that is made up of tiny pieces of and oils from the coffee beans used to make it.
How Many Calories are in Espresso
So how many calories are in a shot of espresso?
Per ounce, espresso actually has around 10x the amount of calories as regular drip coffee because of how concentrated it is. But since espresso is drunk in very small quantities of 1 or 2 ounces while coffee is drunk in mugs of 8 ounces or more, the amount of calories per drink are actually really similar.
The calorie count of a shot of espresso will depend on the concentration of coffee beans that end up in the final drink, which can differ based on the dosage, tamping, and overall strength of the shot. But in general espresso has about 1 calorie per ounce or shot. This means that a classic double shot of espresso is only 2 calories.
Caffeine doesn’t affect the amount of calories in espresso, so decaffeinated espresso will have the same amount of calories as caffeinated.
While 1-2 calories per shot of espresso is a pretty much negligible amount, the amount of calories in espresso can increase really quickly when milks, creamers, and/or sweeteners are added to make the espresso into a drink such as a latte, cappuccino, or macchiato.
If 2 shots of espresso are combined with equal parts steamed milk and equal parts foamed milk to make a cappuccino, it will have around 130 calories.
If 2 shots of espresso are combined with 10 ounces of steamed milk to make a latte, it will have around 205 calories.
If 2 shots of espresso are combined with hot water to make an americano, it will still have only around 2 calories.
If 2 shots of espresso are combined with 4 ounces of steamed milk to make a flat white, it will have around 70 calories.
If a dash of foamed milk is added to 2 shots of espresso to make a macchiato, it will have around 13 calories.
Amount of Calories in Espresso Drinks
Low Calorie Sweeteners and Milk for Espresso
If you’re making espresso or espresso drinks at home and want to keep them low in calories, you're going to want to use low calorie milks and sweeteners.
Two great low calorie sweeteners to use in place of sugar are stevia and erythritol.
And if you like milk in your espresso but are trying to keep your coffee calories low, you can replace dairy milk, which has about 103 calories per cup, with unsweetened almond milk, which only has 30 calories per cup.
Final Thoughts
Espresso does have some calories in it from the extracted oils of the coffee beans, but it's only around 1 calorie per shot, an amount so low that it can pretty much be ignored.
This makes espresso a great drink for low calorie or weight loss diets, however be careful when adding sweeteners, milks, or creams to your espresso since these things can easily increase the amount of calories in the final drink.
If you want to learn more about espresso, its benefits, and even how to make it yourself, be sure to check out the rest of my website! Have a great day!
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