Starbucks Ham & Cheese Croissant

The Starbucks Ham and Cheese Croissant costs £5.85 and carries 385 calories with 12g of saturated fat. Beechwood smoked ham and medium Cheddar in an all butter croissant, served warm.

12g of saturated fat is 60 percent of an adult daily reference intake in a single item, and it is the highest of any savoury breakfast Starbucks sells. Butter pastry and Cheddar are both concentrated saturated fat, and putting them together produces a figure the sausage sandwich only reaches at 10g with far more total fat behind it.

At 385 calories it is the lightest of the hot savoury breakfasts, which is the tension on this page. Fewer calories than the bacon roll, the wrap or the sausage sandwich, but more saturated fat than any of them, and the two facts point in opposite directions depending on what you are counting.

Fibre is 0.6g, the lowest figure in the entire breakfast category. A laminated white flour pastry carries almost none, and unlike a bread roll there is no crust or wholemeal element to contribute any. Protein is a reasonable 15g from the ham and cheese, and salt sits at 1.3g.

Lamination is what makes the pastry expensive and what makes it fragile. Dozens of butter layers folded through the dough turn to steam in the oven and push the layers apart, which is where the texture comes from. Reheated a second time in a store oven those layers dry rather than lift, so a croissant warmed to order is a noticeably better item than one warmed and left.

Warmed is how it is served and how it should be eaten, since the point of the item is the cheese melting into the pastry layers. Allergens are egg, wheat and milk. Prices reach £6.60 on delivery. The plain butter croissant is the sweet version at £3.30.