Pumpkin spice lattes contain more sugar than a can of coke. Our digital PR campaign reveals the shocking amount of sugar in the UK’s most popular autumn drinks

Over the autumn period, we wanted to take the opportunity to find out what’s secretly in the UK’s favourite warm drinks that we liked to consume during the colder months. From luxury hot chocolates, plant-based alternatives or pumpkin spice lattes. We’ve found that there was over 30 grams of sugar in the majority of this dairy, non-dairy of vegan drinks which we are lead to believe to be low in calories.

After looking at the high-streets most popular coffee shops and drink menus, we put together a list of regular-sized drinks from Starbucks, Costa Coffee, Cafe Nero and Pret a Manger which over your daily sugar in one mug or take out cup.

The list we put together revealed the hidden amounts of sugar in warm drinks which are labelled to be healthier options such as oat milk lattes or hot chocolates. However, the comforting beverages were the only beverages which had shocking stats. We discovered that it was pumpkin spice lattes that highest amount of sugar content as it had more sugar than can coke.

We decided to lead with these stats and insights about sugar consumption as the central part of the campaign as we wanted to educate Britons about the dangers of consuming too much sugar. To back these findings, we had our client Dental Excellence to comment about the side effects of oral and dental health from sugar and nutritional and health experts about the regular consumption of high sugar drinks. Along with having these medical comments, we also included research which revealed how much we much sugar we can consume a day and how to stay healthy.

After less than one week of outreach, we gained over 100 links (149 links) and got several pieces of coverage across regional, lifestyle and health publications.