Starbucks Triple Chocolate Brownie

The Starbucks Triple Chocolate Brownie costs £4.30 and carries 418 calories with 16g of saturated fat and 3.9g of fibre. A dense chocolate brownie made with three kinds of chocolate.

16g of saturated fat is 80 percent of an adult daily reference intake and joint second highest on the menu behind the lemon tart at 24g. Chocolate and butter are both concentrated saturated fat and a brownie is mostly those two things held together with a little flour, so the figure is inherent to the format rather than a choice.

At 418 calories it is nonetheless one of the lighter items in the Bakery case, well below the chocolate muffin at 572 and the carrot cake at 505. A brownie is a small dense square rather than a large aerated one, and portion size does most of that work.

3.9g of fibre is high for something this rich and comes from cocoa solids, which are genuinely fibrous. Dark chocolate carries more fibre per gram than wholemeal bread does, a fact that is true and does very little to make a brownie a health food.

Triple chocolate means dark, milk and white together, and each is there for a different job. Dark carries the flavour, milk softens the bitterness, and white contributes almost nothing but sweetness and visible contrast. A brownie made with dark alone is a better brownie and a less appealing one on a shelf.

Sugar at 33g is mid range for the case and lower than both the muffins. Protein is 6g and salt 0.51g. It is one of the few Bakery items with no vegetarian label published despite containing no obvious meat derivative, which usually points at the source of an ingredient rather than the recipe.

Allergens are soya, egg, almonds, wheat and milk. Prices reach £4.85 on delivery. The chocolate caramel shortbread is the other dense chocolate option at 406 calories.