Unleash Your Inner Biohacker: The Unexpected Benefits of Fat in Your Coffee
More energy, less brain fog, and the end of the craving dictatorship—such promises, all from a cup of coffee with a bit of fat. Hard to believe, but so tempting. Any chef will tell you the benefits of fat for flavor, and yet it took a while for me to overcome the seeming contradiction between deep, black, delightfully bitter coffee and sweet, tender butter. When I started my fat coffee experiment, I had no taste for coconut oil, either, and yet the promise of more brain power was more than I could resist. And that is when I truly owned the everyday biohacker in me.
Nothing beats fat to carry flavor. I’ve known that ever since got fascinated with cooking as an art form. That was way back when the world was still focused on low-fat everything, and the gourmet scene just started talking about slow food. I was promoting fat. The good kind. Sweet, delicious, organic butter. I did butter sauces, unbelievably buttery mashed potatoes, and butter-based desserts. But butter coffee? It never occurred to me.
Then, a few years ago, I discovered Bulletproof coffee.
The recipe was made famous by Dave Asprey, an American entrepreneur who popularized biohacking as the art and science of understanding and controlling your own biology in order to get the most out of life.
It came at a good time for me. In addition to my varied background as a chef, translator, publisher, writer, communications strategist, business owner, and expatriate fascinated with martial arts, meditation, and anything to do with human performance, I had just won the French national championships in Vietnamese martial arts (I was 50 at the time), and I was exhausted. I needed some energy.
But butter in my coffee? Hmm…
Biohacking is all about experimenting, so I tried it. For a month, I put butter in my coffee. I felt nothing. Zilch.
How is it that so many high-level athletes, top business executives, and others swore by it? A bit stubborn, I went back at the recipe. Yes, the devil is in the detail. I had neglected to put it all in the blender. So I whipped out the device, and that is when my life changed. My brain lit up.
I learned a lot from this experiment, and mostly that small adjustments can have huge impacts. It’s like in a story—the difference between one that bores you and one that fascinates you is in the details. This was a turning point for me.
Bulletproof coffee confirmed that I was a biohacker at heart. I began to adjust the details of my life to get more with less effort. I embarked on a quest to understand how I interacted with my environment in the broad sense. With my ecosystem. From there, I tweaked here and there, finding ways to be more efficient, to perform better—and ultimately to live life more fully.
It’s worth it. Pass the butter, please.