What is the Healthiest Coffee Creamer?

Let’s be real, asking what the healthiest coffee creamer is is like asking what the best smelling type of blue cheese is. Yes, Danish Blue may be the least smelly but it all stinks.

In general, adding creamer to your cup of joe makes it significantly less healthy. Which begs the question, how do you add cream to your cup without ruining your health?

On its own, coffee has some mild health benefits (only if you drink a cup or two a day) but most people are so excessive in the consumption that even if they only drank black coffee they would be damaging their health.

Add in the fact that creamer can add huge amounts of sugar and fat (not to mention calories) and it’s easy for your antioxidant-filled drink to become an obesity-inducing sugar bomb.

So, if you want to add creamer, we need to ask ourselves a few questions. What is the healthiest coffee creamer and is there a creamer healthy enough that it is actually beneficial to add it to your coffee?

The 3 Healthiest Coffee Creamer Options

When it comes down to it, it was really hard to pick a winner. The main reason for this is that some people are willing to make concessions that others simply aren’t.

Because of this, we decided on three options that would share places on the podium:

• Best “Healthy Coffee Creamer Similar To Regular Creamer
• Healthiest Natural Coffee Creamer
• Best Coffee Creamer With Perfomance Boosters

1. NutPods Almost + Coconut Creamer: Most Similar To “Real” Creamer

If I’m the butt of another “how about you have a little coffee with your creamer” joke I’m going to flip out. I’m one of those people who only eats/drinks that are either really good for me or taste delicious. Since coffee isn’t that healthy, to begin with, I always wanted to make it absolutely delicious!

Thankfully, nutPods has come to the rescue! nutPods was founded by Madeline Haydon when she couldn’t find a dairy-free creamer that was even halfway decent. Her goal was to make a healthy natural creamer with the same rich taste and consistency as half-and-half and she totally blew it out of the water. In addition to nailing the taste and thickness, nutPods also:

• Contain half the calories of half-and-half
• Have no cholesterol
• Are unsweetened
• Have 0 grams of sugar and carbs
• Are a plant-based non-GMO product
• Are keto and paleo friendly

My only gripe about nutPods is the length of the ingredient list. I had to look up a few items on it to make sure they were safe (they are). While I typically prefer simple products, if I’m wanting a delicious drink, this is about as simple as something can get while still remaining one of the healthiest (mostly natural) creamers out there!

2. microingredients – Healthiest All Natural Coffee Creamer

Tell me if this appeals to you: a delicious creamer product that is non-GMO, organic, vegan-friendly, contains no artificial colors/flavors/preservatives/additives/soy/gluten, and has an ingredient list only one item long. Of course, it appeals to you. You’re smart, after all.

Coconut milk powder is probably the best natural one-ingredient creamer that you can get for your cup of joe. Coconut milk is one of the most nutrient-dense superfoods on the planet and is purported to have a laundry list of benefits.

While there is some concern about the level of fat in coconut milk (it’s about the same as dairy) a large amount of research has been done that finds it to be largely beneficial.

Even people who don’t like coconut (my wife…) report absolutely loving this in their coffee as it takes off some of the bitter edge. So if a single ingredient creamer appeals to you, this is the best you can do!

3. Laird Superfood – Healthiest Coffee Creamer with Benefits

Instead of just trying to minimize the negatives, what if we went to the other side of the spectrum and found a coffee creamer that actually provides some health benefits?

Obviously, we’re going to be looking at something with added ingredients (as opposed to just coconut milk powder) as we have to put something into it if we wanted any benefits. However, any product with simple and natural ingredients maintains its health and integrity no matter how many ingredients are on the list!

With the advent of foursigmatic, mushroom coffee has become all the rage and many people are recommending it as a coffee/caffeine replacement. The problem with that? It’s super gross. If I could just figure out some way to get all the health benefits without actually tasting the mushrooms….oh wait…I did!

Laird Superfoods is well known natural coffee creamer company that goes above and beyond in creating functional mixes. The base for this creamer is powdered coconut milk and they add 4 of the most effective mushrooms for performance: Chaga, Cordyceps, Lion’s Mane, and Maitake.

If you want to take your coffee to the next level and actually get some health benefits from your creamer (instead of just a lack of detriments) then this is a really great option!

What Makes A Coffee Creamer “Healthy”?

In our search for the healthiest coffee creamer, we basically had two types of creamer in mind to find. They were: the best tasting creamer with the fewest negatives and the healthiest creamer overall. Luckily for both of us, it wasn’t that hard to narrow it down (mostly because everything on the market is sugar-packed garbage).

These were our stipulations:

• No dairy. In addition to a significant source of calories and fat dairy has been shown to negatively affect your hormones and increase your risk of cancer, asthma, Parkinson’s, elevated blood pressure, and even premature death! Yikes! (Read more about dairy)
• No added sugar. Your mom was right, you eat too much sugar! Sugar has been shown to have a host of negatives effects on our body and absolutely no positives.
• No artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, or chemicals. If you can’t pronounce it or find out where it comes from, you probably shouldn’t be drinking it.
• Short ingredient list. Michael Pollen (Author of Caffeine and In Defense of Food) suggests that we should avoid any food with more than 5 ingredients. Additional ingredients typically mean that more processing has taken place and that the product is far away from its original form. We looked for options with as few ingredients as possible.

While these things weren’t strictly required, they definitely added some bonus points if any of the healthy creamers we were looking at had them:

• Certified Organic
• Non-GMO
• Gluten-Free
• Low Calorie

Every single one of the creamers that we chose hit pretty much every single requirement. Yes, nutPods has too many ingredients and coconut milk has too many calories but I truly that, all things considered, you’d be hard-pressed to find a healthier coffee creamer on the market.

Conclusion

Hopefully, I’ve been successful at helping your find a way to make your daily habit (or indulgence) a little healthier!

The healthiest way to enjoy coffee creamer is not at all, just as the healthiest way to enjoy coffee is to detox from it. But since I know that leaving coffee isn’t for everyone (and I still enjoy caffeine on occasion) scroll back up, choose from the healthiest coffee creamers that the market has to offer, and drink up!