26 Nov 2014 The hype that is bulletproof coffee

“About 10 years ago, I went to Nepal and Tibet and spent some time at very high altitudes,” says then-Silicon Valley exec and longtime biohacker Dave Asprey, who is now the CEO of Bulletproof Exec. “I was run down, tired and sick, but I drank this yak butter tea, and I felt amazing.”

He went home and recreated the tea using blended tea bags and regular butter, “and it was the most god-awful thing I’ve ever tasted,” he says. He decided to test the beverage using coffee instead, though he’d given up the stuff because of the crash and crankiness that came after the initial caffeine boost.

After years of tinkering with different types of butter and coffee beans, he settled on a formula blending “low-toxin” coffee (the beans are processed and roasted to be free of mycotoxins, damaging compounds from mold found on green coffee beans that Asprey claims can negatively impact human performance and health), a couple tablespoons of unsalted grassfed butter and one to two tablespoons of medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil from coconut extract that’s frothed in a blender till foamy.

“It’s about using the right ingredients and treating them properly at each step for an ultra-clean end result,” Asprey says. “The difference was enormous. My mind was clearer. I didn’t crash; there was no jitteriness. All the problems I had from drinking coffee went away.”

So had 100 pounds of body weight, Asprey adds, claiming that his IQ also went up 20 points from replacing his daily breakfast with the 460-calorie, “brain-boosting” beverage (although some observers unsurprisingly question this bold claim). Asprey posted the recipe for Bulletproof Coffee on his blog in 2009, and the recipe quickly piled up 10,000 Facebook “likes”, as celebrities, Silicon Valley execs and athletes alike took to social media and talk shows to praise its effects on their energy levels and well-being.

What’s so good about coffee and fat?

While some observers have taken issue with the idea of replacing a nutritious breakfast with essentially coffee and fat, Asprey insists that coffee is the number-one source of antioxidants in the American diet, making it “hard to argue that it’s devoid of nutrients,” he says. 

He adds that the grassfed butter portion of Bulletproof has all the benefits of healthy milk fat (it’s high in linoleic acid, vitamins E, A and D, and butyric acid) with none of the damaging denatured casein proteins found in cream. Moreover, MCT oil (which can also be found in almonds, seaweed and salmon) has purported energy-enhancing and mild fat-burning properties.

Plus, by drinking it in the morning before consuming any protein or carbs, the insulin-dependent digestion mechanisms don’t go into effect so much, essentially kicking the body into ketogenic (fat-burning) mode.

As for the mental clarity claims, Bulletproof Exec recently conducted a trial involving 54 participants drinking low-toxin Bulletproof coffee and standard arabica bean Bulletproof coffee twice a day before performing seven cognitive tests. Asprey claims the former performed “statistically better”, and will publish the results later this year on the company website.

Building on the beverage’s early success, Asprey has spent the past five years building a veritable Bulletproof empire, anchored by Bulletproof Exec, a lifestyle website offering products and multimedia content on nutrition and anti-aging (Asprey is also president of the Silicon Valley Health Institute)…..

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