With fall just around the corner, many students are grabbing the tasty seasonal drink: the pumpkin spice latte.
The flavoring isn’t just limited to beverages. Anything can be pumpkin-spiced, from bread and cookies to ice cream and much more. Some weird pumpkin spiced things include gum, burger, potato chips, and salads.
According to Starbucks.com, the drink gained its popularity in 2003 when the coffee company “noticed the success of other seasonal drinks.”
Peter Dukes, a Starbucks director of espresso Americas, developed the pumpkin spice latte flavor and Starbucks tested the final recipe in the fall of 2003 in Washington, D.C. It was a hit from the beginning.
Students at Lewiston High School were asked if they like the seasonal drinks. A majority of them said yes and a lot were on the fence about it. Maddie Birdsell, senior, said, “I just don’t like pumpkin, I just don’t like the fact that i can carve something and also eat it.” which is understandable. “I like pumpkin spice but I wouldn’t order it,” Rachael Yonge, senior, says.
The pumpkin spice latte, dubbed as PSL by fans, can include 47 to 116 grams of sugar, according to. And Delish.com reports that people tend to spend $1.14 more in stores when ordering the drink.
For 11 years the Starbucks recipe remained unchanged, and Starbucks did not use real pumpkin as an ingredient but instead a mix of spices. In 2015 the company has added pumpkin puree to the sweet drinks.
Starbuck’s originally wanted to call the PSL drink the “Fall Harvest Latte,” according to Starbucks.com. Starbucks and other coffee companies now offer the PSL in 50 countries.