What's Actually in a 7-Eleven Slurpee? Well, 3 Snickers Bars' Worth of Sugar, for Starters
The beloved 7-Eleven Slurpee turns 50 this year. According to tradition, this is it's "golden" anniversary, when Slurpees are free for all — but there's no way this sweet, colorful sip deserves a gold star when it comes to nutrition. The drugstore drinks are chockfull of empty calories and contain a veritable mountain of sugar.
A small Slurpee (8 ounces) has 18 grams of sugar. As for a large Slurpee? That gargantuan beverage packs 134 grams of the sweet stuff.
The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggests limited added sugar to less than 10% of your calories per day. For someone consuming 2,000 calories per day, that translates to just 200 calories, or 50 grams of sugar, Greatist noted.
With 18 grams of sugar, the eight-ounce small Slurpee is roughly half the recommended daily intake for sugar, Kristi King, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, said in an email. And nutritionally, the Slurpee doesn't have a lot going for it, since it's basically a mix of high fructose corn syrup, food additives and coloring.
"There are no health benefits from high fructose corn syrup," King said, noting that many companies turn to corn syrup instead of real sugar because it's less expensive.
If you want to blow two-and-a-half day's worth of sugar on a large Slurpee, you do you. But just think about the following:
The amount of sugar in one large Slurpee is equal to:
• 204.5 red Swedish Fish candies
• 51.5 Hershey Kisses
• 7.4 pouches of Fruit Punch Capri Sun
• 9.7 servings of Oreo cookies
• 5 servings of Ben and Jerry's Half Baked ice cream
• 3 regular Snickers bars
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