Nothing warms the heart during times of seasonal change quite like your favorite warm beverage, nestled between gloved fingertips. But unless you like your coffee black, chances are you are indulging in beverages that contain a surprisingly high number of calories and grams of sugar.

Take some of winter’s go-to beverages: pumpkin spice lattes, apple cider, eggnog or hot chocolate. The coffee and espresso in these beverages are minimal and the splashes of milk don’t add anything detrimental.

It’s the added sweet syrups that get you. They are pure sugar and high fructose corn syrup, and that whipped cream on top of your drink is a total diet derailment. In fact, sugar contributes to more than 10 percent of many Americans’ daily calories — wasted calories, since we get nothing out of eating sugar.

Fortunately, more and more restaurants and cafés are providing nutritional information. It’s important to not just glance at the caloric or fat content, but to note the grams of sugar you’ll be consuming as well. Sugary beverages are sneaky, and the unfortunate thing is that individuals typically drastically underestimate the amount of calories and grams of sugar in liquids.

The average American indulges in 22 added teaspoons of sugar a day, but the Institute of Medicine recommends no more than about five teaspoons of added sugar a day for adult women and nine teaspoons of sugar for adult men. Twenty-two teaspoons of added sugar is about 88 grams: Women should have roughly 20 grams and men about 36 grams.

It’s easy to forget about the beverages we drink. You may have skipped on dessert for the day by not indulging in a small slice of pie or piece of chocolate, but the eggnog and white chocolate mocha aren’t free rides. A grande pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks already contains 27 more grams of sugar than the recommended daily intake for women.

Sugar has this funny way of interfering with your brain. It can trick you into thinking you’re hungry or unsatisfied. It hastens the development of free radicals in the body, which can contribute to aging. It alerts the dopamine in your system and contributes to addictive behavior. It can literally fatten some of your organs. The journal of Molecular Nutrition & Food Research suggests that sugar can even contribute to acne.

But perhaps most importantly, especially for college students, productivity goes way down following sugar intake.

Watch the sugar intake to avoid headaches, sluggishness and the post-sugar low that follows a quick rise in energy. With the semester entering into its last few weeks — assignments are piling up, extracurricular groups are planning for big events and finals are looming — it is very important to stay sharp.

Granted, the last months of the calendar year are always the best. They burst at the seams with nostalgia, tradition and great culture — food being one of them. So go ahead and enjoy Halloween candy and the fantastic spread of winter holiday treats that follow — in moderation, of course.

The holidays are a wonderful time of year. But if you’re keen on trying to avoid some holiday bloating without sacrificing too much, it may be best to stick with minimally-altered coffee drinks and indulge occasionally in the solid treats, like cookies and cornbread, instead.

Jillian is a magazine, newspaper and online journalism graduate student. Her column appears every Wednesday in Pulp. Her go-to sugary beverage of choice is the very delicious Starbucks caramel apple spice. E-mail her at jathaw@syr.edu and follow her on Twitter @jathaw.

Published on October 29, 2013 at 10:15 pm