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We’ve all heard of espresso, cappuccino, cold brew, and other coffee drinks of those nature, but have you ever heard of bulletproof coffee?
This relatively knew style of coffee was created by Dave Asprey in 2011 to compliment the keto diet. The keto diet is a low-carb, high fat diet designed to put your body into a state of ketosis, which allows you to burn protein and fat for energy. By burning more fat in your body, maintaining a state of ketosis can help your body to lose weight, but may not necessarily be great for your health long term.
Since the keto diet relies on consuming more foods that are high in fat, Asprey was looking for a way to add more fat into his daily meal plan, thus bulletproof coffee was created.
Bulletproof coffee, also known as keto coffee, adds butter and MCT oil to your coffee to give you a unique boost in the morning. The butter and MCT oil provide an injection of fat into coffee that will help raise the amount of fat you’re consuming per day. This combination in your coffee can also be used as a meal supplement for breakfast, giving you high amounts of fat and buttery flavor with your morning cup of joe.
It may sound like a strange combination, but there are a lot of people out there that have tried it and now can’t go back to regular coffee.
How Do You Make Bulletproof Coffee?
If you’re in a rush you can pick up Bulletproof Coffee in a grab-and-go container at your local grocery store, but what if you want to make it at home?
There are three main ingredients to Bulletproof coffee – coffee, grass-fed butter, and MCT oil, which is typically in coconut oil.
If you want to stick to the original recipe that Dave Asprey came up with in 2011, you’ll want to put 1 cup of coffee, 1-2 teaspoons of MCT oil, and 1-2 tablespoons of grass-fed butter into a blender. Turn the blender on and blend everything up until it’s nice and foamy. Pour into a cup and enjoy.
There are several different variations on the original recipe that you can find online, but for the most part they stick to this basic version. The other recipes adjust how much MCT oil and how much butter to add to the mixture, as well as substitutions if you do not want to use real butter or MCT oil.
Making this Bulletproof coffee is extremely easy, and people claim it gives you a nice jolt in the morning that typical coffee doesn’t give you. Those extra saturated fats from the MCT oil and the butter can help you focus, boost your energy, and, if you’re sticking to the keto diet, can help you lose weight overall.
However, we’ve been told growing up that too much saturated fats can be bad for us. They can cause heart issues and high cholesterol, so is Bulletproof coffee safe to drink?
Is Bulletproof Coffee Safe and Healthy?
As you may have guessed, adding butter and MCT oil to your coffee is not the healthiest thing you can do. If you add just 1 tablespoon of both MCT oil and grass-fed butter, that’s adding about 22 grams of saturated fat to your cup of coffee. If you thought that was a lot, you’d be right.
The American Heart Association recommend that a person consuming 2,000 calories per day should only ingest about 13 grams of saturated fat per day. So obviously 22 grams is way over the recommended daily intake based on the American Heart Association.
Traditional dietary guidelines in the United States recommend no more than 22 grams of saturated fats per day. So while this does fall in line with what you would be taking in from your cup of Bulletproof coffee in the morning, you have to remember that this recommendation is for the entire day. If you take in those 22 grams first thing in the morning, then anything you eat throughout the day is going to put you over that limit.
Basically, Bulletproof coffee is not healthy, but neither is the keto diet in the long term. The keto diet is meant to be a short-term diet, geared at losing weight by getting your calories from fat. If you’re working on losing weight using the keto diet, then Bulletproof coffee is good substitute for breakfast in the morning as all the calories are coming from the fat. However, it is definitely not healthy for your long term health and should be limited to a breakfast substitute and not an every day thing.
Coffee can have its own health benefits when enjoyed in moderation, but adding butter and MCT oil to the mix can significantly reduce those benefits and even make that cup of coffee unhealthy. Consuming foods and beverages in moderation is always important when it comes to your overall health. If you love Bulletproof coffee, just understand exactly how unhealthy it can be and try not to make it an every day habit.
