Visualizing the Disparity of Caffeine, Calories & Sugar in our Favorite Caffeinated Drinks

I don’t like to speak for the rest of the world, but I’m a naive digital food journalist so I will — once I realized my metabolism was beginning to work against me, I began to choose my caffeinated drinks based on the biggest energy-boost-to-lowest-calorie-ratio possible.

Thanks to this new visualization put together by the folks at Rasmussen College and data from the Mayo Clinic and the Journal of the American Dietic Association, we get a pretty interesting view of some key energy drinks on the market and the amount of calories, sugar and caffeine in each. In addition, we see that the average American consumes 200 milligrams of caffeine daily, which, apparently shouldn’t have too adverse an effect on your well being.

According to the graphic, black coffee still acts as one of the best caffeine-to-calorie ratio drinks, offering up 180mg of the white crystalline xanthine alkaloid (yeah, I looked that up to sound smart) to measly 5 calories per serving. 5-Hour Energy seems to come in a close second, offering up 138mg of caffeine per serving with a total of four calories.

Here’s how the rest breaks down:

Infographic by Rasmussen College