What's In Coffee Mate?

There’s a series of ads running on Dubai Eye at the moment in which chemical company BASF extols the wonders of chemistry. And what better way to celebrate the achievements of chemistry than to look at how the marvel of modern food chemistry can be used to create a non-dairy creamer. A conversation with Jordanian blogger and coffee mate fan Roba Al Assi yesterday prompted me to pop the lid on that yummy tasting powder and see just what it is you’re putting in your mouth with your morning coffee. What I found was similar in many ways to Tim Horton’s recipe for happiness, a recipe many people found fascinating.

The first thing we should note about Coffee Mate is that each 3mg serving contains 1 mg of saturated fat and 2mg of carbohydrate as sugar. In other words you’d be as well off dipping a sugar lump in some ghee. The second noteworthy thing is that nobody ever uses a 3mg serving.

A Spoonfull of Coffee Mate Contains:
 
Glucose syrup
Arguably the precursor to controversial cheap sweetener high fructose corn syryup, glucose syrup is a concentrated commercial sweetener made by treating the starch in vegetable crops such as corn and maize (Sourced from the US, read this as genetically modified corn). Corn syrup is sweeter and cheaper than cane sugar.

Hydrogenated vegetable oil (may contain coconut, palm kernel and/or soybean oil)
This is where that saturated fat comes in – and don’t forget that 3mg (or a level teaspoon) of coffee mate contains 5% of your recommended daily intake of saturated fat. As a guideline, you could drink half a cup of whole milk to get the same saturated fat hit as three milligrammes of coffee mate. I do love the ‘may contain’, too. Oh, and the soybean oil is probably from genetically modified beans.

Palm oil is a nasty little ingredient I have written about extensively before. It’s a crop responsible for major deforestation of the Indonsian rain forests because it provides a cheap, stable at room temperature, fat much beloved of food processors. Expect to find it lurking in biscuits, ice creams and all sorts of processed packet sauces, mixes and other foods.

Added to that, this (already very high in saturates) oil is ‘hydrogenated’, which means it’s been heat-treated with hydrogen to change its composition – basically turning the unsaturated fats in the palm oil into saturated fats, known as trans-fats. Trans-fats are controversial and many manufacturers and retailers (including the UK’s Marks and Spencer) are acting to remove trans-fat content from the foods they sell after a number of studies linked trans-fat consumption to significant increases in the risk of heart disease.

Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative)
This is an odd ingredient, as it is permitted by the US FDA to be an ingredient in 'non dairy' creamers, and yet is, as it says on the tin, a 'milk derivative'. Casein is a protein found in milk and this ingredient, which is a thickener and adds a 'dairy taste' to products, is obtained from fresh and/or pasteurized skimmed milk by acid coagulation of the casein. The mix is then neutralised using sodium hydroxide and powdered. Yummee!

Dipotassium Phosphate
A stabiliser, tagged by the US FDA as ‘generally regarded as safe’ which never quite sounds as good as ‘safe as houses’, does it? It’s used to keep the powder powdery. Other uses of dipotassium phosphate include as a fungicide and pesticide. Interestingly, its use as a pesticide on food crops in the US has not been approved. But it’s safe, right?

Sodium Aluminium Silicate
Apart from finding its way into your daily cuppa as an anti-caking agent, this ingredient has been approved by the EU as a game repellent. Which is nice, no? A lovely cup of deer repellent to start the day!

Monoglycerides, Acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono- and dyglycerides
Also known as E472e. Mono and diglycerides are fats, used to extend shelf life, add a creamy flavour and help to bind other ingredients together. There's a lot of debate about them as they have appeared on food labels in place of hydrogenated oils, although they're a sort of new name for an old friend as they are, themselves, hydrogenated in the production process. The latter ingredient is sometimes referred to by the more friendly acronym DATEM.

Artificial Flavour, Colour
Nothing natural here, then...

So there we have it, the full skinny. Now you can nip off and slide a spoon of processed sugars, saturated fat, pesticide and deer scarer into your cup of instant coffee and know it's doing you good!