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BLOG: Butter in your coffee?
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If you’ve ever attended any of my lectures, you know that I come down hard on coffee for several reasons. However, if you listened carefully you heard that there are benefits to coffee – in limited quantities and under the right circumstances. Typically, I recommend decaf coffee with no cream or sugar.
Recently, however, there is a new trend starting up and it’s got some appeal. I still recommend the decaf version (we get enough caffeine from other foods), but instead of the typical sugar and cream, many people are adding butter!
To most people, putting butter in their coffee sounds questionable if not borderline dangerous, but not all butters are bad for you. In this case, there is only one kind of butter you should put in your coffee: grass-fed butter. The unsalted version is probably the best that you can find in stores. But why grass-fed butter?
Most cows are corn- or soy-fed. It’s cheap and filling, but cows aren’t actually meant to eat that – they can’t even digest it properly – and their milk produces the kinds of fats you don’t want in your body (not to mention that they are more often than not fed genetically modified organisms). Grass-fed cows, on the other hand, commonly produce the best milk and beef, and the butter made from those cows is just as good.
Here are four reasons why you should be putting this kind of butter in your coffee:
1. Only grass-fed butter has the right fats that regulate cholesterol. Grass-fed butter has the best ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (which will reduce body fat) and is a good source of vitamin K.
2. It provides healthy fats for your brain and body to create cell walls and hormones. The short-chain fatty acid butyrate, once thought to be bad for you, has been linked to preventing neurodegenerative diseases and increased energy expenditure and is also anti-inflammatory.
3. Drinking it each morning puts your body in the routine to burn fat all day, helping you trim down overall. Conjugated linoleic acid, found in grass-fed butter, has been shown to reduce body fat mass, especially in overweight individuals.
4. Two tablespoons of butter in your coffee is all you need to replace a breakfast meal altogether, if you need a quick alternative when you are on the go. Providing your body with essential fats and calories is a higher performance blend than a carbohydrate source like oatmeal. (I still recommend a decent protein-based breakfast on a regular basis).
Now, given all of that, I still think that black decaf coffee offers the best of all options for a coffee drink. However, if you must have an additive, might give this unique option a try. Bottoms up!
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