“Coffee… upgraded?
Is “Bulletproof Coffee” all it’s cracked up to be?”
“Suppressed hunger, steady lasting energy, and mental clarity. These are the claims of the internet sensation of hacked coffee known as Bulletproof Coffee. So what is this coffee and can it deliver on what it promises?
In a post from Precise Nutrition, Brian St. Pierre breaks down everything you need to know about this popular “hacked coffee.”:
Bulletproof Coffee introduced the world to “coffee hacking” and the novelty of butter in one’s morning brew. As a result, it’s become something of an internet sensation. People are talking about it. People are trying it. Many even claim it works wonders for them.
But what is it about this magical concoction that has people pimping their cup of joe? More importantly, do the results actually match the hype?
“Hacking”: The quest to improve everything
Everyone knows that a healthy lifestyle is a journey, not a destination.
Indeed, it’s a life-long project defined by the “relax, slow down, and take one day at a time” approach we share in our nutrition coaching programs for men and for women.
But hey, who doesn’t love shortcuts? Or tweaks and fiddling?
Enter “the hack” — a way to improve, individualize, and/or streamline a process — like a computer hacker who messes around with the original software.
“Hacking” has become a defining concept in our culture. There’s IKEA hacking. Home hacks. Body hacking. And if you want to go all the way, life hacking.
In the exercise or nutrition area, if you’re more advanced, you might have wondered:
Is there some way I could “hack” my nutrition or fitness?
Or perhaps if you feel a certain ennui about your morning brew:
Is there some way I could make my coffee more science-y and awesome?
And if you’re that sort of curious person who hunts for better ways to do things, you may have already stumbled across Bulletproof Coffee.
What is Bulletproof Coffee?
Bulletproof Coffee (BPC) is actually a recipe.
In essence, it’s a combination of coffee, grass-fed butter, and medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil.
(Some people even add nootropics — cognitive enhancement supplements or drugs — to the mix.)
Of course, with Bulletproof Coffee, not just any coffee will do. You can’t just pull out your ol’ Dunkin’ Donuts or Tim Hortons blend and think it’ll work. Remember — hackers gotta be optimal.
So they fancy things up with so-called Upgraded™ Coffee. (Yes, that’s trademarked.)
For starters, Upgraded™ Coffee promoters claim it improves energy, mood, productivity and overall health… much more than regular old coffee.
And also unlike regular coffee, Upgraded™ Coffee is supposedly mycotoxin-free. (We’ll explain that idea more in a minute.)
OK, so you take super-duper coffee, then add grass-fed, unsalted butter and MCT oil. Now you’ve got Bulletproof Coffee. This is next-level Space Age stuff right here.
Here’s the recipe:
- 2 cups (500 ml) of black Upgraded™ Coffee
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) of unsalted grass-fed butter (or more, up to 80 grams of butter)
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) of MCT oil
- Blend (ideally in a high-speed blender) until the oil emulsifies and it looks like a latte
Bulletproof Coffee fans claim that it’s satisfying, kills hunger, eliminates jitters often caused by high caffeine intake, and keeps drinkers humming all day.
Do these claims pan out?
Time to explore.
First, I’ll look at what the research says about coffee, mycotoxins, saturated fat and MCTs. Then I’ll try some Bulletproof Coffee myself.
Let’s start with coffee.”
Is it good for you? Or bad for you?
Based on the research it’s hard to make a blanket statement about coffee.
Like a lot of nutrition science, most of the data on coffee are correlational. Correlational data don’t tell us cause and effect. They just tell us what things tend to go together.
Coffee’s potential benefits
On one hand, regular coffee consumption (1 to 3 cups per day) is consistently associated with a lower risk of:
- diabetes
- Alzheimer’s
- Parkinson’s
- many cancers
- overall mortality
Coffee and caffeine are also widely recognized performance and brain boosters.
Coffee’s potential harm
Unfortunately, many of the potential benefits seem to disappear if we drink too much coffee — say, more than 3 cups a day.
And coffee consumption is also associated with:
- higher risk of miscarriage
- disrupted sleep
- worsened PMS symptoms
- increased blood pressure, even in people without hypertension
So, kinda mixed results here. No clear winner.
(For more, see All about coffee: Is it good for us? Or a disease waiting to happen?)
Coffee’s benefits (or harms) definitely seem to depend, in part, on how much we drink.
But there may be other factors at work. Such as:
Caffeine metabolism
One reason that coffee studies are hard to interpret is that humans are diverse. Genetically, we don’t all respond to coffee or caffeine in the same way.
About half of you reading are… a little slow.
No, seriously, half of you have genes that make you a “slow” caffeine metabolizer. If you’re a slowpoke and you consume a lot of caffeine, your chances of stuff like heart disease go up.
The other half of you are “fast” caffeine metabolizers. You won the genetic lottery here — habitual caffeine consumption actually lowers your heart disease risk. (Don’t get too cocky. You still have to keep your coffee intake to no more than about 3 cups a day to see benefits.)
(If you’d like to know which type you are, check out 23AndMe. And for more on this, see Dr. Berardi’s interview with nutrigenomics researcher Dr. Ahmed El-Sohemy here.)
Of course, there are many other factors in maintaining good health and avoiding cardiovascular disease. But if you’re interested in nutrition and fitness (as we’re assuming you are), you probably want to control all the factors that you possibly can.
Now, here’s another possible risk factor you may not have known about: mycotoxins.
Do mycotoxins matter?
Much of the discussion of Bulletproof Coffee revolves around the potential mycotoxin content of coffee.
“Myco” comes from the Greek mukēs, which refers to fungus or mushrooms. Coffee is grown in tropical countries close to the Equator. And due to the climate of these regions, fungal growth is more common.
Thus, mycotoxins are a form of potentially toxic mold (specifically, metabolites produced by fungi) that can develop on coffee beans, among other foods.
Researchers have known for decades that a high intake of mycotoxins can cause health problems in both animals and humans.
Six major mycotoxin strains — aflatoxins, ochratoxins, citrinin, ergot alkaloids, patulin, and fusarium — commonly occur on or within food products.
However, as with many environmental compounds, the dose makes the poison. As far back as 1980 researchers have noted that:
- Mycotoxins are not often found in commercial coffee grinds.
- If they do appear, their levels are low.
- Roasting destroys 70-80% of mycotoxins (and recent research actually shows reductions of 69-96%).
This is not a universal finding, however. More recent research has had some differing results.
Ochratoxin A (OTA)
When it comes to coffee, ochratoxin A (OTA) is the most studied mycotoxin. It’s toxic to the kidneys, suppresses your immune system, can cause birth defects, and is classified as a possible human carcinogen. Sounds pretty bad.
A 1997 research team analyzed 633 different samples of coffee from several European countries, and tested them in 9 different labs.
They found that more than half of the samples had no detectable levels of OTA, and the rest had, in their words, “a rather low level”.
According to their estimations, consuming 4 cups of coffee (32 oz) would provide 19 ng (that’s nanograms) of OTA.
By comparison, in 2010 some French researchers tested 30 roasted coffees that were widely available in French supermarkets. They found that a 300 ml serving (about 10 oz) contains 31 ng of OTA.
Clearly this is substantially more than the roughly 5 ng per 8 oz that the 1997 research team found.
These researchers state that OTA in coffee is generally underestimated because there are other substances in coffee that interfere with quantifying total OTA content. Hence why their numbers were substantially higher.
What’s a safe OTA level?
Researchers aren’t sure what a safe dose of OTA would be.
Opinion 1: 1.5 nanogram per kilogram of body weight per day according to the Virtually Safe Dose (VSD) discussed by the French researchers.
Opinion 2: 5 ng/kg/day according to the European Commission and the FDA.
Opinion 3: 14.3 ng/kg/day according to a joint committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO).
OK, so I’m 86 kg (about 190 lb). Let’s put that into real terms.
Opinion 1: I’d have to consume 5-27 cups of coffee a day to exceed the safety limits.
Opinion 2: I’d have to drink 17-91 cups a day to exceed the safety limits.
Opinion 3: Over 250 cups a day. Sonnyboy, fetch me mah coffee hose!
Well, it seems that I’m in no danger regardless.
As I’ve mentioned, mycotoxins appear in other foods too. OTA occurs in small amounts in:
- raisins
- cereal grains
- peanuts
- beer
- wine
- legumes
A mixed diet containing reasonable amounts of all of these foods, in conjunction with a modest coffee intake (1 to 3 cups per day) probably won’t push me past the safe OTA consumption limit. That’s right, even if I get a little crazy with Mr. Peanut or the California Raisins.
However, if:
- you’re concerned about optimizing — perfecting — your intake;
- you’re still worried about OTA and mycotoxins;
- you have a very low risk tolerance;
- you’re willing to spend twice as much for the same amount of coffee;
then something supposedly low in mycotoxins, such as Upgraded™ Coffee, might make you feel more comfortable.
But remember — again, according to the research — most of the coffee you drink is really low in mycotoxins anyway.
And there’s no evidence to suggest that this one trademarked brand of coffee has a better mycotoxin count than any other brand.”
The article goes on to break down the rest of the recipe of butter, and MCT Oil as well as providing his personal opinion on his experience with drinking bulletproof coffee. But, like everything, to each his own.
To finish getting all the details, finish the article at the link below on Precise Nutrition:
And check out this video from the creator of Bullet Proof Coffee, Dave Asprey
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Image courtesy of: Andrew & Sue Wood
