Coffee Milkshakes Are Turning Us All into Jittery Rhino-People

Sunday is National Coffee Day, a holiday NBC News would like to observe by telling us all that coffee drinks — our lattes and frappucinos and frothing, caramel-drizzled macchiatos — are slowly turning us into race of jittery behemoths. We will stomp around the world frantically until our hearts explode in our chests and a more prudent species (the lizard people living in our subway tunnels, obviously) inherit the earth after having evolved a helpful aversion to caffeine and pumpkin spice.

Coffee would make for a fine, fat-burning guzzle if Americans enjoyed it black, maybe with just a packet of sugar or a single non-dairy creamer. Those days, however, are long gone — coffee drinkers now demand that their caffeine delivery system be overloaded with pumpkin spice, peppermint dust, caramel goo, and four gallons of heavy whipping cream. Some of the milkshake-esque offerings at places like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts can have meal-like calorie counts (the Dunkin’ Donuts Frozen Mocha Coffee Coolatta with Cream, for instance, contains 1,050 calories, basically all of them coming from sugar and fat, the modern era’s two favorite food groups).

Indeed, the bitter bean juice our ancestors referred to as “coffee” has changed so dramatically that there may soon be a day in the not-so-distant future when humans believe that coffee tastes like processed pumpkin guts and ice cream. NBC’s report tries to nudge the conscious consumer away from the coffee shake offerings, but it’s a lost cause at this point. We’ve already begun the inexorable transformation from humans to hulking rhinoceros hybrids, each of us buzzing on a caffeine high as we charge headlong through the world, heedless of or looming extinction. Good luck out there, espresso drinkers — you’ll be the first to get stomped.