Starbucks Charred Chickpea & Chimichurri Wrap

The Starbucks Charred Chickpea and Chimichurri Wrap costs £5.50 and carries 478 calories with 13g of protein and 4.4g of fibre. Charred chickpeas with chimichurri, houmous, spinach, pickled slaw, red peppers and sweetcorn in a tortilla.

It is the heaviest cold item in the category at 478 calories, ahead of the egg and cress at 436 and the chorizo focaccia at 394. It also carries the most carbohydrate on the menu at 66g and the most sugar at 11g. Plant based is not a synonym for light, and this wrap is the clearest example of it here.

The sugar is worth breaking down because none of it is added as sugar. Sweetcorn, red peppers and the pickled slaw each bring their own, and pickling liquid is usually sweetened to balance the vinegar. Eleven grams spread across four vegetable components is a different thing from eleven grams of syrup, though it counts the same on a label.

Where it does well is fibre at 4.4g, second only to the focaccia, and saturated fat at 3.5g, which is lower than every sandwich except the focaccia. Chickpeas and houmous carry protein and fibre together, which is what gets a meat free wrap to 13g of protein without dairy.

The char in the name is doing real work rather than sounding appealing. Direct high heat browns the sugars and proteins on the outside of a chickpea, which produces flavours that boiling never creates, and it is the only way a pulse gets close to the savoury depth of roasted meat. A wrap of plain chickpeas would taste of very little.

Sesame in the allergen list comes from the tahini in the houmous and catches people who scan for nuts rather than seeds. Wheat is the other, from the tortilla, and it carries both vegetarian and vegan labels.

Prices reach £6.05 on delivery, which makes it the cheapest of the two wraps. The tomato and mozzarella panini is the vegetarian hot option with far more protein at 30g.