How much caffeine is in a latte?

A latte is espresso and steamed milk. The shots carry the caffeine, and the milk decides nearly every other number on the drink.

Counts toward goal385 ml
Caffeine63 mg
Calories147 kcal

Move the slider to see what a bigger or smaller latte does to the numbers. The app uses the same figures. The caffeine comes from the shot count, not from the volume, so it stays put as you drag.

See when today's caffeine clears with the caffeine cutoff calculator.

The shots carry the caffeine

A latte is one espresso shot poured into steamed milk. A standard 350 ml cup carries the same 63 mg the shot carried on its own. The app counts a latte in shots, and each one adds 63 mg. The catalog gives a latte a per-shot volume increment of zero millilitres. The second shot goes into the same cup rather than asking for a bigger one. A double-shot latte is logged as 350 ml and 126 mg. How much liquid is in the cup is a separate field. Set it to what you were actually handed, and let the shot count say how strong it was.

Milk is the reason it beats water

Most drinks in the catalog sit at a hydration factor of 1.00 or below. A latte is one of the few above it, at 1.10. The app credits a 350 ml cup as 385 ml toward the goal. That comes from the milk, not the coffee. The Beverage Hydration Index trial is cited at the foot of this page. In it, milk was one of the handful of drinks that left the body more slowly than plain water did. Protein and fat slow the stomach's emptying. Milk also arrives with sodium and potassium already in it, so the kidneys are in less of a hurry to shed the water.

The milk you pick moves 100 calories

At the catalog default, a 350 ml latte is 147 kcal, which is the largest number on this page by a distance. When you log one, the app asks which milk went in and swaps the calorie figure to match. Skimmed is 34 kcal per 100 ml, semi-skimmed 46, whole 62. Across a 350 ml cup that is 119, 161 or 217 kcal. That is about a hundred calories of spread from a question nobody treats as a nutrition decision. The caffeine number does not budge through any of it.

Hydration factors follow the Beverage Hydration Index: Maughan RJ, Watson P, Cordery PA, et al. “A randomized trial to assess the potential of different beverages to affect hydration status: development of a beverage hydration index.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2016;103(3):717-723. Read the paper on PubMed. In WaterChamp a latte counts for slightly more than plain water.

The WaterChamp mascot drinking boba tea

WaterChamp for iPhone & Android

A water, caffeine and alcohol tracker. It counts 62 drinks toward your daily goal, shows a live hydration level, and tells you your last chance for coffee.

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