Starbucks Chocolate Muffin

The Starbucks Chocolate Muffin costs £3.95 and carries 572 calories with 44g of sugar. A chocolate muffin with chocolate chips through it.

At 572 calories it is the heaviest item in the Bakery case and the heaviest single food item Starbucks UK sells. 44g of sugar is around eleven teaspoons and second only to the Victoria sponge at 49g. For a morning item bought alongside a coffee, both figures are worth seeing plainly.

Saturated fat at 5.9g is the surprise, and it is low. The lemon tart carries four times as much and the brownie nearly three times, because muffins are made with oil rather than butter. Oil keeps a muffin moist for days, which is exactly why bakeries use it, and it brings almost no saturated fat with it.

Chocolate chips rather than chocolate through the batter is a deliberate choice as well. Chips are formulated to hold their shape in an oven, so they stay as distinct pockets instead of melting into the crumb, and that gives a muffin bites of concentrated sweetness against a plainer background. Melted through, the same weight of chocolate would read as far less.

Fibre at 4.3g is the highest of the three muffins and good for the category, coming from cocoa solids as much as from flour. Protein is 7.5g and salt 0.62g.

A muffin bought with a coffee is the most common pairing in the case and worth doing the sum on. This alongside a Grande Caffè Latte comes to well over 700 calories and around 58g of sugar between them, which is a substantial share of a day taken standing at a counter before eleven.

The muffin format itself explains the calorie count more than the recipe does. A Starbucks muffin is roughly twice the weight of a supermarket one, so a figure that looks alarming next to a croissant at 414 is partly a portion difference rather than a richness one.

Allergens are soya, egg, barley, wheat and milk, and no dietary labels apply. Prices reach £4.70 on delivery. The blueberry muffin is the lightest of the three at 485 calories.