One year later, and nothing has changed

The WC warned the health watchdogs about Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte, but they did nothing

Starbucks has again released its infamous Pumpkin Spice Latte, crammed with fat, sugar, calories and caffeine — and, again, the country’s various health officials have remained stunningly silent.

Frankly, the Wine Curmudgeon does not know how this is possible. Didn’t I warn them at this time last year?

No doubt this has been an oversight on your part, and that we can soon expect studies that say drinking one Pumpkin Spice Latte is the equivalent of smoking a couple of cigarettes, or that two lattes a day is the equivalent of binge drinking. Perhaps you can even coin a term like latte use disorder, based on the wonderfully terrifying “alcohol use disorder.”

So, once more, know that the ingredients in a Pumpkin Spice Latte – made with 2 percent milk, no less – make my 2 1/2 glasses of wine with dinner look like a health tonic:

• One serving contains 390 calories, about three times as much as a glass of wine. Or, almost one-fifth the recommended daily calorie intake for a young, moderately active woman.

• One serving has almost half of the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat, and twice as much fat as two slices of bacon. And how much deadlier does food get than bacon?

• One serving has about one-fifth of the cholesterol and carbohydrates, 1/10th of the sodium, and more than a third of a day’s safe intake of caffeine. That’s twice the caffeine in a serving of Red Bull, which exists for caffeine.

And, to quote the Associated Press, Starbucks has sold “hundreds of millions since its launch in 2003.” But not to the WC; knowing the health risks, I am an abstainer.

So, once again, the WC pleads with the nation’s medical authorities: How have you ignored this threat to our health for so long?