Do Brownies Have Caffeine? How Much?

Are you a brownie fan but at the same time conscious about your caffeine consumption?

Then you are in the right place because I brought brownies…

So let’s go on an adventure together. How much caffeine do brownies actually have in them? Not much it turns out.

Brownies have caffeine because brownies are chocolate cakes, and chocolate is made from cacao beans that naturally contain caffeine. As a general rule, 100 gms of chocolate brownie contains about 2 mg of caffeine.

Darker chocolate brownies (meaning brownies with more additional cocoa or dark chocolate) will have more caffeine than regular brownies.

Read on to clear all your misconceptions and doubts about whether or not brownies have caffeine and whether or not you should be worried about it.

Is There A Lot Of Caffeine In Brownies?

A standard brownie of 7cm by 5 cm weighs about 70 gm. So considering it let us get a rough idea of how much caffeine is present in brownies.

• 100 gm brownie = 2 mg caffeine
• This means 1 gm brownie = 0.02 mg caffeine
• Therefore, in 70 gm brownie = 1.4 mg caffeine

So as a general rule, one brownie (70 gm) has about 1.4 mg of caffeine. Now, as per mayoclinic.org, for most healthy adults, up to 400 mg of caffeine, a day seems to be safe.

From 1 brownie, as we calculated, we get about 1.4 mg of caffeine. So think for 400 mg of caffeine consumption, we would have to eat about 400/1.4 = 285.7 (To round up, let’s conservatively choose the lowest number, so it turns out to be 285)

Hence, for consuming 400 mg of caffeine in a day, you would have to eat a whopping 285 brownies (not that I’d complain…)

If you consume a “regular human serving” of brownies (like one of two in a sitting) you won’t need to worry about the caffeine content unless you are extraordinarily sensitive.

For reference, a 12-ounce can of Diet Coke has 46mg of caffeine and a cup of coffee has between 80 and 110.

Obviously the caffeine content in brownies (and chocolate in general) is negligible to the point that manufacturers do not even have to include it on the packaging.

However, brownies have a lot more than caffeine going on. Since caffeine and sugar are not the same, let’s talk about how brownies can be harmful, even with such a low caffeine content.

Are Brownies Healthy?

Each brownie has about 112 calories and lots of added sugar. Now, a high sugar diet can cause tooth decay, less intake of essential nutrients, and the problem of weight gain. The added sugar can also raise the chance of potential heart disease. 

Moreover, each brownie can have 7 grams of fat (and 1.7 grams including saturated fats). When it comes to saturated fats in your diet, it is recommended to aim for 10% or less of your everyday calorie.

So, for instance, if you are eating 2000 calories per day, then less than 200 should come from saturated fats. Calculating it further in grams, it turns out to be 22 grams.

Too much saturated fat in your food can increase the bad LDL cholesterol amount in your blood, further raising the chances of heart disease. So it is good to limit the consumption of saturated fatty acids.

Although brownies can supply a few amounts of zinc, iron, vitamin A, etc., you shouldn’t consider them completely healthy.  Or healthy at all, really.

When you consume brownies and add them to your diet, you are reducing the amount of nutritious food you could have eaten instead of them. (because remember you have a limited appetite. Once you feel something unhealthy in your diet, at the same time, you are potentially losing the space where you could have placed something else that was healthy.)

How Much Brownie Will Be Considered Harmful?

Generally, eating one or one-half brownies a day should be okay. However, since brownie is not healthy food, you should avoid them or replace them with some healthy alternatives.

If you are a heart patient, overweight, or diabetic individual, then chocolate brownies are not a good food as a part of your diet. Sugar is used in making the brownie, and it is a simple carbohydrate that has no nutritional value. After you take sugar, it will cause inflammation of your body that can, in turn, last for hours.

In making brownies, plain flour is used, which is a form of refined carb, not a good option for a healthy lifestyle.

What to do if you want to get a similar taste of brownie but are not ready to harm yourself? Well, you need to tweak the recipes to make them healthy.

To make healthier brownies, you can make the following changes to your recipe:

• Instead of gluten and grain, use almond flour
• Rather than using white sugar, use coconut sugar
• To avoid butter, make use of coconut oil.

So by simple tweaks like these, you can make your brownie recipe healthy. 

Conclusion

So, to sum up, brownies do have caffeine, but the amount of caffeine present in each brownie is likely not going to cause any harm. However, brownies are high in fat, sugar, and calories which can have a bad impact on your health if you consume brownies on a daily basis. So you can’t consider them as part of your healthy diet.