The truth about Starbucks coffee

The truth about Starbucks coffee

by Asa Montreaux

You may think that all coffee is the same, but if you really taste a few different brands of coffee, you’ll notice there are marked differences. Many coffee chains offer a very bitter, strong type of coffee. Starbucks is one of these companies that seems to offer very strong coffee, with a taste that suggests it will pack more of a punch.

But what is in Starbucks coffee? Their signature coffee, which they claim originated at their tiny original location in Pike Place Market in Seattle, is something you can look up on their website, where they, by law, list the ingredients of all their drinks and food products. So their all listed right? It turns out, the ingredients for their signature coffee, are not listed. While you can find the signature coffee on the website, “Pike Place Market Roast”, where ingredients are listed, below it only says, “ingredients not available’.

Curious, right? They are by-law required to tell you what is in their food and drink products, right? And there is a curious pattern. The ingredients are available for almost all items, but for the traditional coffees, there are no ingredients listed.

For Dark roast, Pike Place or ‘Medium’ roast, and for Blonde roast, there are no ingredients listed. Huh.

The truth about it, approximately a decade ago, Starbucks was required to post the ingredients of all of their items online, and make them available for customers in store upon request, just like McDonald’s, and other fast food restaurants. Starbucks, almost to the same extent as McDonald’s had been under pressure for a long time for having dangerous, and addictive substances in their products. Reluctantly, they both agreed to reveal the ingredients in their products. Starbucks was hit with a global embarrassment. Customers and journalists found that there was a ton of chemicals and additives in the coffee that just about no one had ever heard of. There were chemicals that had been banned by states, but that Starbucks tried to sell as part of a national or global standard product. And there were chemicals that were found by studies to be just as addictive as street drugs. Starbucks was truly an unsafe and bizarre operation.

But what was the strangest thing of all? There was something in the coffee to give it an extra bitterness. Mixed in with the sweet cocoa that surely contributed to its popularity, there was something else, a dark, dark ingredient. If you read the ingredients, online, or on a handout from employees in-store, there was something in it named something familiar yet slightly unfamiliar. There was ‘animal feces’ in the coffee.

It may have taken you a minute to deduce what that meant. You are aware what an animal is, and you are aware that ‘feces’ means poop. You may have even got through that process of deduction, and still thought, there is no poop in my Starbucks coffee is there? The truth is, there obviously was. 

People were outraged and it appeared on major news sources that Starbucks had faked the taste of their coffee, and that they had tried to save money by including almost no real coffee, and just some strong tastes. Starbucks were closing, perhaps permanently, around the world, though you may not remember. Sometimes, there is a scandal, and it seemed so big, but then it disappeared so suddenly, you forgot.

The truth is Starbucks one-eightied. They suddenly said, there is no poop in the coffee. They announced it on every major news source. The CEO, who recently stepped down, said there was absolutely no poop in the coffee, and this was a false report.

And Starbucks, who was required by law to keep their ingredients online just updated their own ingredients with the right ingredients, right? No, they simply removed the ingredients from online and instead wrote, ‘Ingredients for this product not available.’

To be continued…