In today's coffee shops, we have more options for our morning brew than ever before. Espresso drinks are everywhere, coffee's served hot and cold, and there are many more teas to choose from than just green and black. Coffee shops introduce international favorites to menus regularly, and while the olive oil-based Oleato was a flop for Starbucks, matcha has soared in popularity. Of course, matcha has been a popular drink in Asia for hundreds of years, particularly in Japan, but you may be wondering if it packs the same punch as your regular morning latte. Starbucks says its grande matcha latte has 65 mg of caffeine per 16 ounces. By comparison, the café's grande espresso latte contains 150 mg. But it's not so cut and dry.

The caffeine content in an average cup of coffee can vary wildly — the U.S. Food & Drug Administration says a "regular brewed, non-specialty" 12-ounce cup of coffee can have anywhere from 113 to 247 mg of caffeine. That's a pretty wide range, and the method of preparation and coffee beans you use can complicate that further. Matcha, however, really isn't much like coffee. It's technically a kind of green tea, albeit stone-ground and used as a powder. Regular green tea has considerably less caffeine than coffee, at 30 to 50 mg per eight-ounce cup, and that can also be affected by the method of preparation. Brewed matcha delivers around 70 mg of caffeine for a fraction of the ounces, so it's considerably more potent, but that 16-ounce Starbucks matcha latte isn't all matcha powder. Like an espresso drink, the amount of ground tea leaves used in a cup of matcha is small, and the rest is water, milk, and sugar.