Starbucks Nutrition: A TidyTuesday Analysis

by: Mharkel Borja

setup

library(tidyverse)

## ── Attaching core tidyverse packages ──────────────────────── tidyverse 2.0.0 ──
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## ✔ ggplot2   4.0.1     ✔ tibble    3.3.0
## ✔ lubridate 1.9.4     ✔ tidyr     1.3.1
## ✔ purrr     1.2.0     
## ── Conflicts ────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
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## ✖ dplyr::lag()    masks stats::lag()
## ℹ Use the conflicted package (<http://conflicted.r-lib.org/>) to force all conflicts to become errors

Why This Dataset?

• Starbucks drinks are extremely popular
• Many people don’t know how much sugar and calories are in them
• Goal: help people make healthier choices

Research Questions

• Which Starbucks drinks have the highest sugar and calories?
• How does drink size affect calories and sugar?

Dataset

• TidyTuesday Week 52 (Dec 21, 2021)
• Contains:
  • Drink name
  • Beverage category
  • Size
  • Calories
  • Sugar
  • Fat
  • Caffeine

Loading Data

library(tidyverse)

starbucks <- read_csv(
  "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/master/data/2021/2021-12-21/starbucks.csv"
)

## Rows: 1147 Columns: 15
## ── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
## Delimiter: ","
## chr  (4): product_name, size, trans_fat_g, fiber_g
## dbl (11): milk, whip, serv_size_m_l, calories, total_fat_g, saturated_fat_g,...
## 
## ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
## ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

Highest Sugar Drinks

starbucks %>%
  arrange(desc(sugar_g)) %>%
  slice(1:10) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(product_name, sugar_g),
             y = sugar_g)) +
  geom_col(fill = "steelblue") +
  coord_flip() +
  labs(title = "Top 10 Highest-Sugar Drinks",
       x = "Drink",
       y = "Sugar (g)")

Calories by Drink Size

starbucks %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = size, y = calories)) +
  geom_jitter(width = 0.2, height = 0, color = "darkgreen", alpha = 0.6) +
  labs(title = "Calories by Drink Size",
       x = "Drink Size",
       y = "Calories (kcal)")

Key Findings

• Frappuccinos are the highest in sugar
• Larger drink sizes usually have more calories
• Teas are consistently low in calories and sugar
• Lattes vary depending on milk type (whole, non-fat, soy, etc.)
• Popular drinks can contain over 60–80g of sugar

Conclusion

• Starbucks drinks vary widely in nutrition
• Many high-sugar drinks are not obvious to customers
• Size choice has a big impact on calories
• Data analysis helps reveal healthier vs. less healthy drink options
• This project shows how TidyTuesday data can answer real-world questions