Welcome to Diet and Fitness Radio, a podcast brought you by Diet.com. This is your fit, fun, and fabulous host, Lady Diet, reporting live from sunny Hollywood, CA. Today’s diet issue corresponds to a recent podcast I did about the dangers of eating too many bagels, pastries, breakfast sandwiches or donuts from popular chains Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and Starbucks. I realized while I was looking at the nutritional information that food wasn’t the only thing on the menu high in fat and calories. Some of the most popular beverages at Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are loaded with calories and fat. So here it goes… a brief discourse on some of our favorite drinks. If I only focus on iced beverages today, it’s because it’s way too hot outside where I live to even think about hot coffee.

Do you consider yourself a milk purist, or in other words, one of those people who shuns anything but whole milk or cream? Maybe you should start reconsidering. A medium Coffee Coolatta with cream at Dunkin Donuts has 350 calories in it, 200 of those from fat. It has 22 grams of fat, or 34% of the recommended fat intake on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet. But get this! That same medium-sized Coffee Coolatta with skim milk only has 170 calories, 0 of those from fat. Sweet Christmas! You’ve just cut the calories in half!

Starbucks shares the same fate as Dunkins. It too offers drinks so tantalizingly delicious that customers like ourselves throw all caution to the wind and order whatever strikes our fancy! The positive is that like Dunkins, Starbucks offers lighter options that taste just as good on a hot day. Case in point: a grande caramel Frappuccino. With whipped cream, this tasty treat contains a whopping 430 calories and 16 grams of fat. Ask for no whip, and you’ve cut your calories to 280 and fat to just 3.5 grams. That’s a big difference! But the biggest difference? Order a grande no-whip light caramel Frappuccino… only 180 calories and 1.5 grams of fat. That’s actually my new favorite beverage at Starbucks. I promise you, it’s really good!

So what am I saying? Take control! Enlighten your favorite coffee drink! Try skim milk and whatever you do, hold the whip cream! Alrighty, that’s it for today’s segment. I am quite thirsty after recording this, so I think I’ll head to Starbucks… for that grande no-whip light caramel Frappuccino for just 180 calories. Thanks for listening and remember to check out www.Diet.com for a free calorie and fat counter.