Is Starbucks Taking a Step in the Right Direction?

As you may be aware, Starbucks has gotten a lot of criticism for making some sacrifices in regards to food safety. Considering how much it costs to afford daily Starbucks visits, you’d hope that they’d positively respond to their customers’ pleas to start serving up some healthy options.

Well as it turns out, you may just be in luck!

Starbucks recently announced that they will start serving coconut milk on their menu! According to a website made up of people sharing their suggestions for the corporation, one of the most popular recommendations is that they finally offer an alternative to dairy and soy. This doesn’t really come as a big surprise either. After all, we’ve seen the effects that soy can have on human health – and the results aren’t good.

But with this new development starting February 17, Starbucks will be adding their new vegan-friendly, paleo-friendly and lactose-free alternative to the menu! The milk itself is going to be coming from coconuts on Sumatra, a small island in Indonesia – it’s all single origin.

As you can imagine, people are showing their excitement for the new announcement. Now people will be able to visit a Starbucks knowing that they don’t have to ingest any soy or antibiotic-treated products!

Keep in mind that it wasn’t long ago that Starbucks decided against offering almond milk as an alternative on the menu. They announced that their reasoning was backed up by the fact that nut allergies are simply too common across North America for it to be a good decision. Thankfully, they found a solution that works.

Perhaps other companies will follow suit and start offering healthy alternatives that don’t come in the form of soy or sugar-free. The regular stops that people make on their daily walks to work will no longer come in the form of consuming unhealthy foods. Instead they’ll finally have healthy options that they won’t need a map to find. Think about it – there are over 11,000 Starbucks locations in the United States. If each one starts offering healthy food and drinks, then people will finally start getting their money’s worth.

An excited Christina Barone, vice president of brewed espresso at Starbucks, announced at a press release, “Delivering the options our customers want is always the highlight of my day. We have a high bar for anything we pair with our high quality espresso and this coconut milk is smooth and perfectly complements the coffee.”

So, hopefully that’s all true.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the benefits of coffee in small doses, but even then, there’s so much unhealthy, non-organic powder out there that just causes more problems than it solves. I’m waiting for the day that Starbucks and other joints around the US can get in line with a policy that only serves fair trade, organic coffee. However, this move by Starbucks is definitely in the right direction.

According to some samples that have started in parts of Portland and Los Angeles, the coconut milk is receiving some good reviews. I guess we’ll ultimately see how it turns out on February 17 – will you be in line that Tuesday morning?

Just in case some of you are interested I contacted Starbucks requesting to have a copy of the list of ingredients in their ‘new coconut milk’ you won’t believe how they responded:

Lucky for us one of HHL’s readers found a picture of the ingredients list: