(updated August 24th, 2026)
No, not in the way that question usually means. A NESCAFÉ Cappuccino sachet is 60 calories and 7.9g of sugar in a mug. Nothing in the ingredient list deserves the worry the question implies.
The more useful thing to know is what it actually is. By weight, the sachet is mostly not coffee.
What’s actually in a NESCAFÉ cappuccino sachet?
Glucose syrup, first. Here’s the ingredient list from the Australian pack, published by NESCAFÉ:
Glucose Syrup, Soluble Coffee (18%), Milk Solids, Vegetable Oil, Sugar, Flavours, Stabilisers (340, 451, 331, 452), Emulsifiers (471, 472e), Salt.
Ingredient lists run in descending order of weight, so glucose syrup is the single largest thing in the sachet and coffee is the second, declared at 18%. There is more glucose syrup in the sachet than coffee, and a separate listing for sugar further down as well.
None of that makes it bad for you. It does make the marketing description worth a second read: NESCAFÉ describes the product as “an expertly crafted, balanced blend of pure NESCAFÉ instant coffee, sugar, and milk”, which is accurate as far as it goes and leaves out the two ingredients sitting at the top of the list.
How much sugar is in a NESCAFÉ cappuccino sachet?
7.9 grams per mug, which is 9% of an adult’s reference intake.
These are the UK product’s own published figures, for one 15.5g sachet made up with 200ml of water:
| Per mug (220ml) | Amount | % reference intake |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 60 kcal | 3% |
| Sugars | 7.9 g | 9% |
| Fat | 1.3 g | 2% |
| of which saturates | 1.1 g | 6% |
| Protein | 1.3 g | 3% |
| Salt | 0.19 g | 4% |
NESCAFÉ publishes these directly. Worth noting the recipe is not the same everywhere: the Australian sachet is 12.5g against the UK’s 15.5g and the formulations differ, so check the pack in front of you rather than trusting a figure off the internet, this one included.
How does that compare to a real cappuccino?
Similar calories, roughly double the sugar, and the sugar is a different kind.
A traditional cappuccino made to the Italian specification works out at around 65 calories on whole milk, so the sachet is not the calorie bomb people expect. Where they part company is the sugar. A proper cappuccino contains 4 to 5 grams of sugar and every gram of it is lactose, which is milk’s own sugar and arrives with the milk whether anyone wants it or not.
The sachet’s 7.9g includes that lactose plus glucose syrup and sugar added on purpose. So the difference isn’t really how much, it’s how much of it was put there. Three a day is close to 24g of sugar, which is the number worth knowing rather than anything about instant coffee itself.
Caffeine is a separate question and the sachet does not publish a figure, so I’ve gone into how much caffeine is in cappuccino mix on its own page.
Is there a lower-sugar version?
Yes, and it halves it.
NESCAFÉ sells a Cappuccino Unsweetened Taste alongside the standard one. Its published figures are 3.9g of sugar and 56 calories per mug, against 7.9g and 60. So the sugar halves and the calories barely move, because the recipe is built differently rather than simply having the sugar taken out.
Same convenience, half the sugar.
So should you drink them?
If you like them, yes. One a day is a small sweet drink, and the honest reading of the label is unremarkable rather than reassuring: it is what it says it is.
I’d switch to the unsweetened one though, and not for health-anxiety reasons. It’s that the standard sachet is sweetened to a fixed level and you can’t undo it, whereas the unsweetened one you can sugar to taste. You get the decision back, and you might well use less.
The one thing I’d genuinely watch is treating it as a coffee. At 18% coffee it’s a sweet milky drink with coffee in it, so if you’re drinking four a day for the caffeine, you’re mostly drinking glucose syrup to get it.
