A coffee kick-start without the jitters or crash
There's a quiet health revolution going on at the end of an alley in Sheung Wan, where superfoods store Anything But Salads is serving up "bulletproof coffee", a drink invented by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey.
Asprey has created a "bulletproof" way of life that involves bio-hacking your diet, mind and body. The philosophy feels like it was designed for astronauts tethered on earth, so to get a rocket-fuelled taste of the concept, I ordered a cup.
Anything But Salads' executive chef Delon Tuan blends upgraded coffee (toxin- and mould-free) with grass-fed, unsalted, organic butter and MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil. Inspired by the yak butter tea Asprey drank in Tibet, the bulletproof coffee is surprisingly smooth and creamy considering there's no milk.
It has an appealing flavour and a slightly sour aftertaste. It's coffee without the jitters or the crash; I feel a long period of sharpened mental performance and focus combined with zero appetite.
"It's a high-fat beginning to your day to kick-start your body into fat metabolism," says Calista Goh, founder of Anything But Salads.
"Naturally speaking, our bodies use their own fats as a fuel source. But in today's commercialised, processed world of foods, you don't get high-quality fats. Instead, we eat starches and sugars, and burn glucose for fuel. That isn't sustainable, and leads to blood sugar crashes."
According to nutritional therapist Lisa Fossey, founder of the Nutrition Clinic, adding fats to the coffee means the caffeine is absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream.
"This gives you a slower 'high', which will last for longer, and won't give you the usual surge of energy that can lead to a crash," she says.
"The caffeine dilates the blood vessels, allowing the good fats and oil to pass more easily into the brain, where it is thought to give increased mental awareness and concentration. MCT is metabolised to produce ketone bodies that provide energy to the body and the brain."
Is it good for you in the long term? "That's the golden question," she says. "The concept is new, and tied in with the 'palaeo diet'. We don't know the long-term effects of eating so much saturated fat."
She says that replacing meals with bulletproof coffee may lead to a dip in nutrition levels when compared with a healthy meal (which could be seen as a weight-loss boon or a nutritional deficiency bust).
As with regular coffee, it has the potential to be addictive. But Fossey says that, when taken in moderation, it may be healthier because it avoids the peaks and troughs that stress the adrenal gland and affect insulin levels.
If you're tempted to recreate this at home, only high-quality ingredients should be used for the drink to be beneficial.
Bulletproof coffee is also available at Elephant Grounds at 11 Gough Street in Sheung Wan.
