He’s been described as “half the man he used to be”; the UK politician who has dramatically lost weight. Asked on the radio about his outward transformation, Tom Watson explained that he had been addicted to sugar but weaned himself off.
Conversation then shifted to the drink in his hand, the interviewer identifying it as a “bullet-proof coffee”; coffee with not milk, sugar or even cream, but butter.
Yes, butter! That, said Watson, was the other secret of his weight loss.
Now, it seems entirely counter-intuitive that butter could be any kind of slimming agent. At around 750 kCal per 100g, only lard (900+) and extra virgin olive oil (1000+) are more calorific.
The key to bullet proof’s purported function is “ketosis”. Not only does this butter coffee replace your breakfast now, it allegedly also suppresses appetite and helps burn remaining calories in the body during the fast.
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I’m less a coffee than a tea man. But FOMO had my mouth foaming. And I thought today’s home-made “bullet -proof tea” sounded like an innovation on the concept.
Of course, when preparing it, I was also very aware of the Tibetan tradition of preparing tea with butter and salt. As with the “onion stuff” I drank in a previous Strainer, this was something I’d been wanting to try. I used the same Henan dark brick tea. And (foolishly, it turned out) I boiled it up for even longer this time.
I put a lot of butter in the teapot. But, with the liquor lacking that paleness I’d seen in pictures online, I added some milk as well. As recommended in a B-P Coffee fan site, I used unsalted butter (“because salty coffee would be gross!”), but expected to add salt itself later, so as to taste it both ways.
In the event, like my wife, I preferred it with salt. It tastes more like a meal that way. And, with that oily film on the top, it somehow needs to taste like a meal. Sugar may be nice instead, but probably not with salt.
The result was similar to the Milk Tea that friends from Inner Mongolia have given me. Despite this being “fresh” rather than made from powder, I don’t consider the taste very different. Nice? Well, it has to be tried. I do know many real fans. It’s a lot better than the onion one. And I will drink this again if anyone ever offers me a real yak-butter version.
When I set out writing this article, I was taking full ownership of this coincidence; the connection seemed mine to make. But that’s where I was wrong.
You see, the term isn’t longstanding slang. It isn’t like “on the rocks” or “going comanche”; it’s only about ten years old, according to Wikipedia.
The etymology leads us to David Asprey, a contemporary Californian body-hacker. And “bullet proof” doesn’t describe the butteriness of the coffee; it merely name-checks his own lifestyle brand. This could easily have been called Livestrong or Goop Coffee instead.
Tibet is to Asprey’s bullet-proof butter what Thailand is to Dietrich Mateschitz’s taurine (the Red Bull ingredient). The diet guru allegedly discovered the concept while trekking there and drinking tea like today’s, later translating it to American Joe. So much for my innovation and insight.
I’ve just found all this out.
Did butter tea suppress my appetite? Well, it certainly delayed my lunch, because I was suddenly so grumpy I didn’t want to sit down anywhere with anyone. I did finally eat a lot, after returning from a long, grumpy cycle-ride in the rain. I guess that’s more caffeine than is good for me.
