A sweet tooth isn't the only reason we add a little sugar to our coffee or tea. Scientists say sugar has an important effect on reducing bitterness, not only by masking it but also by influencing its chemistry.
Research published in the journal Food and Function reveals new insights into how caffeine, sugar, and water interact at the molecular level to affect the flavor of hot beverages.
Most people are aware that drinking too much soda is bad for your health, and there has been a big shift toward sugar-free versions of regular soft drinks because there is so much research showing that too much sugar is bad for you.
Coffee, on the other hand, as one of the most consumed liquids on the planet, has been studied, and it's been proven that coffee is definitely good for you. So, if excess sugar is bad for you and coffee is good for you, how do you figure out whether sugar in coffee is good or bad?
HOW MUCH SUGAR IS OK?
An adult should limit their free sugar intake to 30g per day, which is about 9 teaspoons of sugar. If that makes you think, "Great, I can have 9 cups of coffee a day," unfortunately, that's a total of 100 free sugars.
It won't surprise you that if you don't think carefully about the amount of sugar you eat or drink every day, you'll be exceeding the safe amount that ensures a healthy lifestyle and can have a significant impact on your health.
You might be interested in: Why drink coffee without sugar?
WHY DO WE ADD SUGAR TO OUR COFFEE ANYWAY?
If you ask most people how they take their coffee, the most typical answer is probably “milk and two sugars.”
Why do we feel the need to drastically alter the taste of such a wonderful drink in the first place?
It's mainly because we start with a very poor quality product that tastes terrible, and the only way to mask the unpleasant taste is to add things we like, like sugar.
All the supermarkets fight each other to produce the cheapest, and that can only result in one thing when it comes to coffee: a bad-tasting beverage. The more you do with the whole coffee beans before the coffee goes into your cup, the more the flavor is leached and the worse it tastes.
On top of that, there are many different qualities of coffee beans, and the frozen coffee granules you get in a jar of instant coffee are almost always produced from the cheapest coffee beans because there's no point in using good beans because it would increase the price and the flavor is eliminated anyway during the production process.
HOW TO REDUCE OR REMOVE SUGAR FROM YOUR COFFEE?
If you must insist on paying for a drink at a coffee shop, don't be fooled into thinking that it's okay to choose any drink you want and that it won't contain sugar just because sugar isn't present in black coffee.
There are plenty of single-serve drinks that can tip you over the recommended 30g a day, so try to avoid those with syrup or whipped cream.
Add less sugar
If you currently take 2 sugars, reduce it to 1 and if you take one, reduce it to half of one.
It might taste a little strange at first, but once you get used to it, the coffee will actually taste better because the natural coffee flavor will be more present instead of being masked by the sugar you add, but if you're using really bad coffee to begin with then it probably won't help.
Use cinnamon instead of sugar
If you like cinnamon, you can try using it as an alternative to sugar in your coffee. It's used as a sugar substitute in products like cereals and works well with coffee. Although it contains a very small amount of sugar, it's a tiny fraction of the amount of pure sugar.
Buy better coffee
You'll immediately turn coffee drinking into an experience, not a habit. If you've been drinking the same brand of coffee for a long time and don't even think twice about buying the same one again and again, first try another coffee that's about twice the price. Something unusual you might not have heard of before.
Whichever option you choose, the coffee will taste so good compared to what you've been drinking up until now that you won't even need the amount of sugar you've been using to mask the unpleasant taste of poor-quality coffee.
If you use some of these tips, you'll be able to enjoy your coffee more and use less sugar.