Anatomy of a Bulletproof Beverage

Bulletproof coffee is a thing now. I had a family member who briefly tried ‘keto’ who made some (and didn’t like it.) When I was in a rehab center after my stroke, I used the pitiful bits of butter I could get in my coffee, since I didn’t want to waste them on the often-lukewarm food. 

The purpose of a bulletproof beverage is to get healthy fats into your body. Note that in Keto * Low-Carb we go by science when we think about what fats are healthy, not by what big national organizations claim are healthy fats— they’d have us using CANOLA oil! Remember there are people trying to sell us on the idea that sugary Honey-Nut Cheerios are ‘heart-healthy’ just because they have oat ingredients in among all the sugar and carbs.

Because ‘keto’ is trendy right now, you have to beware of trying random advice about what is allowed on Keto * Low-Carb. You can’t use ‘creamers’ in your coffee— not only are they processed food, but they have sugars and starches and probably very little HEALTHY fat. 

A bulletproof beverage consists of three parts— the basic beverage (coffee, tea, cocoa/carob and hot water, bone broth), a healthy fat (butter, coconut oil, MCT oil, extra-virgin olive oil, home-made ghee, perhaps heavy whipping cream or coconut milk/cream as a lightener) and, possibly, additions. Like cinnamon— healthy for diabetics— a pinch of sea salt or a bit of kelp powder, or any other thing that is healthy in small amounts and tastes well in your bulletproof beverage.

I have never been a big coffee drinker, but I started using some instant coffee when I read about the oxalate problem with tea. I still drink some tea, but not as much and I don’t care for additives in it. I currently have three brands of instant coffee in my house, one of them imported from Germany. 

On the few occasions I have been able to afford Kerrygold butter, I reserved it all for bulletproof beverages so the goodness wouldn’t be wasted. I use MCT oil when I can, because it’s helpful in getting into ketosis or staying in ketosis. Since I can’t afford a lot of MCT oil, I use coconut oil as well— it CONTAINS some MCT. I used to use butter as well, but ever since I first made ghee, I prefer the taste of that. 

When I was in the rehab center I got some extra-virgin olive oil to put in my coffee, but that tasted just too dire. Butter in my coffee was a treat, EVOO in coffee just wrecked a good cup of coffee. Since coming home, I found that if I put in 1/2 Tablespoon to 1 Tablespoon of EVOO in my coffee and have 1 Tablespoon of MCT oil, butter, ghee or some other tasty fat source, I can’t taste the EVOO. 

SWEETENERS are not normally used in bulletproof beverages, but when I do a hot cocoa/carob BP beverages, I use a few drops of liquid Stevia (Sweetleaf.) On Fridays on other penitential occasions I use as few drops as possible and can handle a hot cocoa with only 2 drops of stevia. Carob doesn’t even need a sweetener really. If you are really ‘hooked’ on sweetened beverages, so that you needed a couple of Tablespoons of sugar in your coffee or tea back when you ate carbs, you can use whatever amount of liquid stevia you need, but try to taper off, and also sometimes take a break from the sweetener. We need to break our addiction to constant sweet things!

Have you ever made a bulletproof coffee, bulletproof tea or other bulletproof beverage? Did you like it? Is it a regular part of your Keto * Low-Carb life right now? Please share your experiences in a com

The Secret to Better Bulletproof Coffee

Drinking bulletproof coffee (or other beverages) is a popular thing on the Keto lifestyle, and there are dozens of recipes. Sometimes the recipes need to be adapted a bit, either to improve the taste or to improve the ketogenic effect.

The base recipe for Bulletproof coffee calls for a cup of coffee, a tablespoon of butter, coconut oil, or MCT oil, a tablespoon of heavy whipping cream, and, if desired, 1-8 drops of stevia sweetener (Sweetleaf brand is recommended.) I personally also add a pinch of Himalayan pink salt (or other sea salt.) The Keto lifestyle can shrink your salt consumption radically overnight, and that can cause symptoms. And even when you’ve been doing Keto for a while, a dose of quality salt won’t hurt you. AND it can help you reduce the amount of sweeteners you use in your coffee! 

The Butter or oil

I think that the earliest bulletproof coffee used butter. Kerrygold butter, from grass-fed cows, is really good for this use if you can afford it. MCT oil is a kind of oil that is derived from coconut oil. It is the best thing for putting your body into ketosis (the whole point of the Keto lifestyle.) WARNING: do NOT put MCT oil in a styrofoam cup. Use a paper disposable coffee cup if you can get it, or a real coffee cup and wash it.  Coconut oil is another alternative for this ingredient. If you get coconut oil that is liquid at room temperature, don’t put it in styrofoam, either. Because coconut oil has MCT oil in it, and the kind that’s liquid at room temperature has even more MCT oil in it. If you like coconut flavor, ‘extra virgin’ coconut oil has that flavor, regular coconut oil does not. Amounts used are 1-2 tablespoons. If starting with MCT oil, use 1 or 1/2 tablespoon at first and work your way up. For that matter, if you are unused to any kind of butter or oil in your coffee, start small and work your way up. Note: If you save your bacon fat, you can also add that to bulletproof coffee. 

Heavy Whipping Cream

This is what people used before there was ‘creamer.’ Be sure it says ‘heavy’ whipping cream and not just whipping cream. And of course don’t use a ‘creamer’ with sugar, artificial sweeteners, or other ingredients. Creamer should come from milk which comes from cows. Or goats. Or yaks. If the store is out of heavy whipping cream, you can use other milk products such as half-and-half or even whole milk, but don’t use much. 

If you can’t have dairy, the best solution is to just omit this ingredient. Otherwise, you might try a bit of canned coconut milk. If you like the taste, that is. I thought for quite a while I couldn’t drink coffee without a little cream. I ran out of cream and found out that bulletproof coffee is good without it.

Amount is usually 1-2 tablespoons.

The Coffee

You can use brewed coffee from a coffee machine, or instant coffee powder. Decaf or full caf. Just don’t get a coffee powdered mix like International Coffee which has sugar, sweetener or flavorings in it. I’ve never been a coffee fiend so I get by with instant. I switch off between caffeined coffee and Sanka decaf. 

Sweetener

If you’ve used an artificial sweetener, you probably did it for the wrong reasons. It’s not about saving ’calories.’ After all, we can eat a plate of bacon on Keto and not count a calorie of it. The reasons we don’t like sugar or sweeteners are these: there could be carbs, and even a zero-carb sweetener could raise our blood sugars by provoking an insulin response. I use Sweetleaf brand liquid stevia, and I use only a few drops— 2 or 3. And some days I use no sweetener at all. Though when I do get generous with the Sweetleaf, it doesn’t seem to affect my blood sugars any.

Salt

A pinch (1/8 teaspoon) of Himalayan pink salt or a good sea salt really makes a bulletproof coffee. If you are worried about salt, know that Dr Eric Westman doesn’t take salt away even from patients with high blood pressure— the Keto dietary lifestyle does the job of lowering blood pressure. And the salt and other minerals in sea salt are beneficial.

Other Bulletproof beverages

You can make bulletproof beverages with tea, herbal tisanes (‘herb tea’), home-made bone broth and cocoa drink (1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder in hot water, usually with some Sweetleaf drops.) Just add the other bulletproof beverage fixin’s to the beverage in question. 

Other flavorings

Sweetleaf stevia sweetener comes in various flavors as well as plain, and you can use any flavor. You can also add a bit of cinnamon or other spice for flavoring. I mostly only use cinnamon in bulletproof hot cocoa, and then only some of the time, as I’m not sure I like it, but cinnamon is good for diabetics.

When fasting

When fasting, we mostly consume water, or plain black coffee or tea. But Dr. Jason Fung in The Complete Guide to Fasting allows one cup of ‘semi-bulletproof’ coffee or drink while fasting. Use about 1 teaspoon of the butter/oil, or 1/2 t oil and 1/2 t cream. 

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Learn more about Keto and/or Fasting

I find it helps to read books about these subjects so I have all the information I need. It's also inspiring to know I'm not doing this alone.

 The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body through Intermittent, Alternate-Day and Extended Fasting  This book, by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore, really changed my life. Fasting, added to my keto diet, helped me start losing weight again after I got 'stuck' at a certain too-high weight and wanted to lose more.

Dr Atkins Diet Revolution This was the first ketogenic diet that recommended measuring ketones--- at the time with urine test strips.

The Obesity Code: Unlocking The Secrets of Weight Loss - I haven't finished reading this book yet, but it is by Dr. Jason Fung, who also is co-author of the The Complete Guide to Fasting.

Warm fasting fluids for winter

It’s getting to be wintery— we’ve had our first snow up in Michigan’s upper peninsula— and it’s time to winterize our fasting practices. At least if you live somewhere in this hemisphere with cold winters.

I normally drink my distilled water at room temperature. I’ve read things that cold fluids like ice water may not be that great for us. It certainly isn’t great to drink a glass of ice water on a winter day! I have come to prefer room temperature water. But it’s a little on the cold side, especially on a cold morning in a relatively cool house (I keep my thermostat low to save home heating money), when I have to go out and do cold-weather chores that day.

The first thing we can do is drink heated distilled water. I have an electric tea kettle— it’s a replacement for a coffee maker I used to heat tea water which just wore out, in part due to using hard water (well water) for years in it. My tea kettle very much prefers my current distilled water from my water distiller. When I was a teen and lived in San Jose California, I knew a neighbor family who were Chinese-Americans, and they were big believers in drinking warm or hot water. I babysat for them once or twice a week for years, and it rubbed off on me. You can just heat your water as if for tea, and drink it like tea. I personally wait for 2 minutes or so before drinking hot tea or hot water. Since water fasting is purer fasting, adding hot/warm water as a fasting fluid warms up your insides without making you feel like you are not ‘really’ fasting. (Below: an electric tea kettle similar to mine.)

Tea is a great warm fasting fluid for most of us. I’ve read it suppresses the appetite a little. A lot of people assume that green tea is the only ‘healthy’ tea, because there was a famous study that showed health benefits for green tea extract. But there are other studies that show benefits for black tea, and Chinese studies that show benefits for pu-erh tea. They haven’t studied white tea yet, but it’s from the same plant and is probably mostly like green tea, only more so. There are drawbacks, though. I’ve read that tea may raise insulin levels— or is that blood sugar? And there is the oxalate issue— if you are watching oxalates, tea is one source you might have to give up. (I gave up spinach and almond products and rhubarb instead.) (Below: my favorite brand of pu-erh tea.)

Coffee. You can learn to drink black coffee. I got started drinking coffee with a few drops of liquid stevia sweetener in it, And reduced the number of sweetener drops over time. I also added a teaspoon of heavy whipping cream to the coffee. But this morning I drank a cup of black coffee and lived. Like tea, coffee can suppress your hunger. So when you are fasting and have hunger pangs, a cup of coffee or tea may stop that. 

Home-made bone broth. Yes, you can drink bone broth during fasting. There are a very few calories in a cup of bone broth, but it is worth the calories to get the benefits of bone broth. A cup of hot bone broth feels more like you’ve had a meal. If you are doing a fast of 24 hours or more, you can have cups of bone broth at your normal meal hours and you might feel less deprived. 

Herb tisanes (herbal ‘tea’). I drink Stash brand peppermint tea and ‘spice dragon red chai’ which has cinnamon, rooibos, ginger and clove, and I also have some home-harvested stinging nettle tea, since I have lots of stinging nettle all over my yard. These are a decent change of pace, and are caffeine-free, and so one can drink them in the afternoon or evening without causing sleepless nights.

I have read that when people are fasting, they may feel the cold more. If you experience that, it could be a signal that warm fasting fluids are something you need more of. At least, you could give them a try. (I also recommend wearing warm sweaters in the house rather than overheating your house.) 

 Above is the brand of home water distiller that I use. I am quite pleased with it and it's easy to clean with apple cider vinegar, and it makes great distilled water.