Some people see coffee as an absolute necessity, a liquid that must be consumed within minutes of waking up. Others see it as a treat to be enjoyed at leisure, whether over a weekend paper at home or with a coffee shop scone or croissant and a side of good conversation.

So too do coffee producers fall into different categories. You have those brands that truly care about the quality of their product—that are careful about the sourcing of the beans, keep tight control over roasts and grinding, and do everything they can to ensure that the coffee is in a consumer’s cup is great stuff. Then you have the coffee brands that see their product merely as a commodity and do everything they can to cut costs.

The unfortunate thing is that sometimes you’ll find brands that operate like the latter acting like the former. Spot any like that on our rundown here? Here are the familiar coffee brands that use the lowest quality ingredients. Plus, don’t miss it.

Yuban

For years, Yuban was considered a brand that made good coffee for a great price. It was almost exotic, even, proudly made with 100% Colombian coffee beans. Then, recently, the recipe changed, according to Coffee Detective. And not for the better. Yuban is no longer 100% Colombian—and based on consumer response, it’s no longer good. In some of its advertising online, the company tries to hedge its way around this change, saying: “Made with Robusta and Arabica beans from Latin America and other tropical regions.” This actually means: “We sourced the cheapest beans we could get from wherever we could find them.”

Green Mountain Coffee

Once hailed as one of America’s best independent coffee companies, Vermont’s Green Mountain Coffee went the way of many brands: it went full-on corporate. According to CNN, by the late years of the 20th century, the brand had grown so big it bought up Keurig, the name with which Green Mountain Coffee pods are now synonymous in the minds of many, only to be bought out by private equity juggernaut JAB Holding in late 2015. Today, with a focus on costs instead of coffee, those little Green Mountain Coffee pods often contain inferior blends of coffee, according to Serious Eats.

Maxwell House

Maxwell House is a storied American brand that has been in the kitchen of many a family for many a generation. But that’s a testament to customer inertia, not product quality. Made with a blend of Arabica and cheaper, bitterer Robusta beans, according to The Old Coffee Pot, Maxwell House’s “Original Roast” coffee is cheap stuff, plain and simple. And in other cheap news, Kraft Heinz, the brand’s parent company, lost a suit last year that claimed they overstated how many cups of coffee a can of the stuff would brew, according to Bloomberg Law.

Nescafé

Not much of a surprise that a cheap instant coffee brand uses cheap ingredients, really. Nescafé coffee was never very good but got an ingredient change about five years back that made things even worse, according to Manchester Evening News. Customers compare the flavor of the new recipe to dishwater and called it “vile” and “awful.”

Folgers

Brewed with care, Folgers can make a decent cup of coffee. Not great, but decent. But that’s not because of any premium level of ingredients. Their Classic Roast blends Robusta and Arabica beans claimed to be “mountain grown” which implies higher altitude but does not actually ensure it, according to Leaf. Coffee grown at higher altitude tends to be more complex and tasty, but it’s harder and more expensive to grow—remember that mountains start at low altitude, so something can be “mountain grown” while in fact having grown quite near sea level.

Dunkin’ at Home K-Cups

Dunkin’, formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts, of course, actually has some pretty good coffee, especially for the price. And especially when accompanied by a donut. Now Dunkin’ at Home K-Cups, the quick-brew single cups you can make in a Keurig machine, on the other hand? That’s cheap Joe best skipped. What’s the disconnect? A complete one: Dunkin’ at Home is made under license by The J.M Smucker Company; it’s literally a different coffee.

McCafé at Home

Like Dunkin’, McDonald’s has surprisingly decent (though often dangerously hot) coffee in its stores and yet offers very low-quality coffee when you buy the stuff to brew it at home. According to Mashed, the McCafé coffee you can buy at stores tastes burnt and bitter even when brewed properly.

Seattle’s Best

Though they take pains not to share this fact, Seattle’s Best coffee brand is owned by Starbucks, and it has been since 2003, via Business Insider. But rather than being primarily a brand with its own retail locations, it’s a cheaper coffee pushed out at places like gas stations and fast-food chains that don’t have their own proprietary coffees.

Even people who take sugar seem at lower risk, say experts, but results may be due to coffee drinkers being more affluent

People who drink coffee – whether with or without sugar – appear to have a lower risk of early death, although experts caution the finding may not be down to the brew itself.

About 98m cups of coffee are drunk every day in the UK, according to the British Coffee Association, with the National Coffee Association revealing that in the US the figure is about 517m cups.

Previous studies have suggested the beverage may be beneficial to health, with coffee drinking associated with a lower risk of conditions ranging from chronic liver disease to certain cancers and even dementia.

Now researchers in China have found people who consumed a moderate amount of coffee every day, whether sweetened with sugar or not, had a lower risk of death over a seven-year period than those who did not.

Similar results were found for instant, ground, and decaffeinated coffee.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is based on data from more than 171,000 participants of the UK BioBank – which has collected genetic, lifestyle, and health information from more than 500,000 people since it began in 2006, including details of participants’ coffee-drinking habits.

The team used data from death certificates to track the participants for a median period of seven years from 2009, during which 3,177 people died.

After taking into account factors including age, sex, ethnicity, educational level, smoking status, amount of physical activity, body mass index, and diet, the team found that, compared with those who did not drink the brew, people who consumed unsweetened coffee had the lowest risk of death.

The greatest reduction, a 29% lower risk of death, was seen for those drinking between 2.5 and 4.5 cups a day.

Reductions in the risk of death were also seen for coffee sweetened with sugar, at least for those drinking between 1.5 and 3.5 cups a day. The trend was less clear for people who used artificial sweeteners.

However, the study questioned participants about coffee drinking and other habits only once and relied on self-reporting. Most of those who used sugar added only a spoonful to their drink – meaning it is unclear if the results would hold for speciality coffees with a high sugar content.

Naveed Sattar, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow who was not involved in the work, cautioned that the findings – while intriguing – were not clear-cut.

“The observational nature of this new study means these conclusions are far from definitive,” he said.

“This is because coffee drinkers are in general more affluent and have healthier lives than non-drinkers and I remain unconvinced whether these factors can be overcome in observational studies.” Prof Sattar added that genetic evidence did not link coffee to any important health benefits.

“I would suggest people stick to coffee or tea, preferably without sugar, which most people can adapt to, and try to do all the other things we know keep you healthy – move more, eat and sleep better.”

In an accompanying editorial, Dr Christina Wee, deputy editor of the journal, agreed the findings were not conclusive. But, she added, it did appear that drinking coffee, whether unsweetened or with a modest amount of sugar, was probably not harmful to most people.

“So drink up – but it would be prudent to avoid too many caramel macchiatos while more evidence brews,” she wrote.

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