A Quick Creamer Experiment: How Much do YOU Use?

April 5th, 2020

When my dad got diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, our first course of action was to cut down on added sugar and remove all foods that didn't align. Creamer is the one thing my parents just couldn't find a healthy alternative for.

They knew their CoffeeMate creamer wasn't "good" for them, but none of the natural options at the store tasted good enough to sacrifice their morning coffee for. They weren't on board and continued to use CoffeeMate.

I was frustrated with this because, from my 25 years of observation to that point, they poured a lot of creamer into their cups. This is how I came up with the Creamer Experiment. To make them realize once and for all just how much creamer they actually used in their coffee and to calculate the reality of calories + sugar from it.

THE EXPERIMENT:
I handed them a bottle of CoffeeMate and asked each of them to add it to a cup the same way they would when preparing a cup of coffee on a typical morning. A single serving of CoffeeMate is 15ml, or approximately 1tbsp, so I took a tablespoon to measure out the amount of creamer in each cup.

We went around the table guessing what the results of our measurements would be. The consensus among us was that there would be more than the 1tbsp serving size in each cup and predicted it would be somewhere around 3tbsp.

Our jaws dropped at just how badly we’d underestimated the volume of creamer used: My dadhad poured in 5tbsp, and my mom had filled her cup with 11tbsp.

1tbsp of liquid creamer contains 5g of sugar and 30 calories. That meant that my dad was drinking 25g of sugar and 150 calories and my mom was drinking 55g of sugar and 330 calories, and just about all of that came from sugar alone. For comparison, the amount of sugar my mom had in her cup was the same amount in a King-Size Snickers bar, and my mom drinks coffee twice a day!

This experiment proved to be a sobering moment for us all, and it was the push I needed to develop a more nutritious coffee creamer. I spent the next year working painstakingly to perfect the formula for Prymal so people like my parents would have a healthier way to enjoy their coffee.

If you’re on the fence about removing traditional, sugary creamers from your diet, I’d recommend doing this experiment on your own. The results will probably surprise you!