Bulletproof coffee. © DR
Makers do not only drink yerba-mate and homemade beer. American hacker Dave Asprey developed the “Bulletproof coffee”, a mix ox coffee, butter and coconut oil meant to improve concentration.
Biohackers are taking an interest in the means to optimize how their bodies function, among which nutrition. We know about Soylent, an attempt to replace food by a drink. Bulletproof coffee promises to be more energizing and more lasting than an ordinary coffee. Behind this coffee and butter mixture, one finds… the famous Tibetan tea.
During a trip to Tibet in 2004, the American Dave Asprey, entrepreneur who claims to be a “professional hacker”, discovers yak butter mixed with tea, a traditional Tibetan drink…While he was suffering from altitude, he assures he felt rejuvenated. Upon his return, Dave Asprey changed the recipe for coffee and added coconut oil to boost the effects, he says. Posted on his blog, the recipe ends up by being all the rage in the United-States with biohackers and later on with Hollywood stars. Dave Asprey is since heading a start-up that is making a lot of money out of butter.
Too good a story?
According to Dave Asprey, butter in coffee would act as an appetite suppressant and its vitamins would be digested faster thanks to the fast-digesting fats contained in coconut oil (MTCs). Beware however, the ingredients need to be of high quality, in other words organic. Bulletproof coffee has its detractors who reckon you need to skip breakfast, a fundamental meal, and that it is “bullshit coffee”—understand politely that it serves no purpose. But no one affirms it can kill you. So here is a DiY recipe…that doesn’t make Dave Asprey any richer.
Ingredients
– Good quality coffee beans. Low range coffee would contain toxins.
– Unsalted butter made from cows fed on grass. Other butter would contain inflammatory ingredients.
– Pure coconut oil, unprocessed, unrefined and cold-pressed. Otherwise, the oil could contain trans fat, the worst fat.
– A blender.
Recipe
Make 250ml of hot freshly ground coffee.
Pour the coffee in the blender, add a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of coconut oil.
Mix.
It’s ready.
Alternative version (review) closer to the Tibetan recipe, with clarified butter, by Yankee Prepper (the recipe starts at 3’55):
Finally, if the Bulletproof coffee has no effect on you, you could always do what half the French do, dip your buttered slice of bread in your coffee. Unaware Biohackers?