Butter…. in Your Coffee? What Is with This New Craze and How Can It Actually Be Good for You?

We thought we’d seen it all - lattes served in avocado peels, golden lattes made with turmeric, even purple ones colored with beet juice! One of the newer coffee crazes you might come across in your favorite local cafe is butter coffee. It’s a polarizing topic - an idea that’s hard to stomach for some, while others salivate over it. But butter in beverages is not a new concept. In Tibet, yak butter tea is a traditional drink that’s been consumed for centuries, giving those who drink it the calories they need to sustain energy in the harsh, cold climate.

Also called ‘bulletproof’ (as in the brand name that started the recent craze) or keto coffee, coffee with butter became popular as ketogenic diets gained more notoriety over the last few years. If you’re not familiar, the ‘keto’ diet is a low carb diet that’s been likened to ‘Atkins on steroids’. It limits carb intake to 50 or fewer grams per day and forces the body into ketosis, a metabolic state where fat becomes the main source of energy. To compensate calorically for the lack of carbs, ketogenic diets encourage high fat intake from foods like bacon and butter.

Enter keto coffee: coffee blended with grass-fed butter, and sometimes the addition of other healthy fats, like coconut oil. The benefits of drinking coffee with butter are:

• Sustained fullness

• Increased focus/reduced potential for mindless grazing

• Increased protein intake

• Better absorption of antioxidants naturally found in coffee, which bind better to butter than milk (say that three times fast!).

You might consider making the switch to butter coffee if you’re looking for ways to stay fuller longer in the morning, or to cut back on sugar in your coffee. The additional flavor from the butter is favored by many as an alternative to sugar that won’t make you crash.

Interested in making your own bulletproof coffee at home? Here’s a video recipe to try!