The definition of ice coffee and the criteria for its composition are not in any way. It only depends on the manufacturers' recipe, how much coffee they use. Most sold ice coffee is sweetened dairy drinks with the addition of soluble coffee. The main ingredient of most products is really milk, so legislation is one of a group of dairy drinks. Declared milk content of coffee beans often exceeded 70%.
All the products compared contained soluble coffee, but the way of its labeling differed. "The labeling rules speak clearly - if the beverage contains a coffee word in the name, the quantity must be stated in the composition. The disadvantage for consumers is the fact that there is no unification of how the amount of coffee is given, " explains Hana Hoffmann, Editor-in-Chief of the dTest magazine, adding: " We have found two different, incomparable ways of expressing our products. Either a lot of coffee was added, without information about its strength or the amount of coffee extract itself, from which the infusion is being prepared. " The most comprehensive of the words was Mr. Brown Iced Coffee-Drink, on which bottles are given both composition information, namely 1% coffee extract and 30% coffee.
The disadvantage of declaring the amount of coffee used, coffee coffee, is that the buyer will not know how strong the coffee was used by the manufacturer. "The products we compared with the quantity of coffee liqueur were in the order of tens of percent. The lowest, 13% coffee ratio was promised by the Müller Cappuccino milk drink. On the contrary, the nearly undiluted coffee hid the Nescafé Black Roast can, where its content reached almost 94%. Nor was Nescafé Cappuccino White coffee, where coffee accounted for more than 58% of the whole product, " says Hana Hoffmann.
Caffeine works in the body as a stimulator of the central nervous system, temporarily suppressing fatigue and raising alertness. However, information about its content in ice coffee is not obligatory. European food labeling rules say that products with the words coffee or tea in the name do not have to decode the caffeine content. Still, nine packs of caffeine were voluntarily revealed. Values ranged from 134 mg / l (Meggle Ice Coffee) to 660 mg / l (Mr. Brown Iced Coffee-Drink). Using the whole pack Mr. Brown Iced Coffee-Drink encourages the consumer with 218 mg of caffeine, which is almost three times more caffeine than one cup of espresso.
The sweetest drink was Meggle Ice Coffee, equal to 10 g / 100 ml and likewise seven other beverages, which in 100 ml concealed more than 9 g of sugar, ie over two bags of sugar used in cafes. The amount of sugar in Coca Cole is about 11 g / 100 ml for comparison. "In addition to regular sugar, ice coffee is also sweetened by sugar syrups, most often inverted or caramelized. The good news is that glucose-fructose and glucose syrup are not found in any of the products found, " says Hana Hoffmann.
In order to meet the customers' ideas of thick ice coffee made of cream and ice cream, they add additives to the products - thickeners. Of the 26 tested products, dTest found only four non-blended products: Nescafé Black Roast, Mr. Brown Iced Coffee-Drink, Capuchin Ice Coffee and Bobik Kafíčko. In the remaining 22 products, some thickening agent appeared and sometimes it was a mixture of several additives at once.
A nice surprise in the comparative ice coffee is the absence of preservatives. The only product indicating the use of potassium sorbate on the packaging was the Albert quality icecoffee box. Similarly, the use of replacement sweeteners was rare. Only one product has been reported - Hochwald Eiskaffee Light, which is an alternative to sugary sweet coffee of the same brand. Complete results of the ice coffee comparison came from the August issue of the dTest magazine.
Source: tz dTest.cz
