Rachel Eats Stuff: The simple Starbucks app hack that will create a 750-calorie drink

It contains as much sugar as 12 doughnuts

A picture showing an elaborately customised Starbucks order has gone viral on Twitter.

Starbucks barista Jessica Lynn, 23, tweeted a picture of an order placed on the Starbucks app by a customer called Ashley - the app allows you to order in advance and then go into a store to pick up your drink.

Ashley, however went to extreme lengths in customising her cold brew, adding 10 pumps of vanilla syrup, five pumps of caramel sauce, five pumps of classic syrup, five pumps of caramel sauce and five pumps of white mocha as well as various other add-ins.

And as Jessica revealed in a subsequent tweet, just the syrups alone filled up around a third of the large cup.

After the tweet went viral, however, other Starbucks baristas replied with similar orders they’d received.

While some people have suggested customers order such drinks purely to take advantage of filling up a loyalty card and earning a free drink, baristas claim certain customers order these highly sugary drinks regularly.

Starbucks - and various other high street coffee chains - hit the headlines over Christmas when it emerged quite how sugary many of their flavoured drinks are.

Ashley’s drink in question would have contained over 150g of sugar and over 750 calories. To put this into perspective, an original glazed doughnut from Krispy Kreme contains 12.6 grams of sugar.

So Ashley’s drink contains as much sugar as about 12 doughnuts.

In the UK, the government recommends adults consume no more than 30g of free sugars a day.

Putting aside any health concerns briefly, The Independent decided to head on down to Starbucks and try our hand at ordering a similarly sugary drink to see a) whether it’s possible, b) how the baristas would react, and c) how the drink would actually taste.

In order to get a drink big enough for all our add-ins, we ordered a venti latte (the cold brew was only available as tall or grande).

From there we added six shots of coffee, five pumps of white chocolate mocha sauce, five pumps of cinnamon dolce syrup, five pumps of hazelnut syrup, five pumps of caramel syrup, whipped cream and both caramel and mocha drizzles.

(Rachel Hosie (Rachel Hosie)

The drink clocks in at 758 calories and 124g of sugar.

Despite all the extras, it only cost £4.50.

(Rachel Hosie (Rachel Hosie)

Although the barista in question raised her eyebrows at the order and seemed rather amused when making it, she delivered exactly what we’d ordered.

How did it taste though?

(Rachel Hosie (Rachel Hosie)

Well, as sugary as you can imagine. The first sip or two were rather enjoyable - just like very, very sweet coffee with a slightly nutty undertone - but the consistency was practically gloopy thanks to all the syrup.

Even for those of us with a serious sweet tooth, it was too much.

A sugary drink from time to time isn’t going to do you too much damage - after all, eating everything in moderation is the key to good health - but perhaps quite this many additional pumps of syrup is somewhat unnecessary.