When I get in line at Starbucks, I order a plain black coffee and ask them for a side of butter. They give me some pretty odd looks, but what I already know is that every Starbucks has butter packets on hand to go along with their oatmeal. And what's more? It's Kerrygold Irish butter. And that's grass fed.
So what health benefit would one get from this?
Coffee can be a starting point for health, but it can also be an ending point just as easily. People order/make their coffee in all shapes and sizes. Some people add sugar laden creamers or hormone laced milk. While others might just add a little cinnamon. Those concoctions offer vastly different health profiles. Having just sugar and caffeine first thing in the morning sets up impending doom for the rest of your day. You are almost sure to crash out at some point, only to find yourself digging around for candy or a muffin.
The first health benefit you get from putting only butter in your coffee is that you are leaving out the bad stuff. A huge part of a healthy lifestyle is what you don't eat. The butter is a fat, which will also help blunt blood sugar spikes.
Butter is almost a pure fat. That's going to scare a lot of you, but really, it shouldn't. Fat is good (mostly). And the idea that fat is a villain has been almost entirely debunked at this juncture. Saturated fats can actually improve your blood lipid profile (here).
Grass fed butter is loaded with Vitamin K. Wait, what? Vitamin K is awesome. And it's sure great for the heart. There is K1 (phylloquinone), found in leafy greens, and Vitamin K2 (menaquinone), which is found in animal foods. Vitamin K2 is especially important because it helps keep calcium out of your arteries.
So far, what do we have? Putting butter in your coffee means skipping garbage sugary or hormone laced concoctions. Your arteries are less likely to be subject to calcification. You reduce your risk of coronary heart disease (here).
But hold up, its going to get better.
Person drinking coffee with butter in it.....meet Butyrate. Butyrate is a fatty acid and it is anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is pretty much the cause of all evil in the body. When excessive inflammation lurks, so does bad healthy profiles. Butyrate is shown to lower inflammation (here).
CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) is found in grass fed butter and it has been linked to reducing body fat mass. Yep, your old coffee was plumping you up, your new coffee is slimming you down! You can see a study here.
But how gross does it taste?
I get this question all the time. The answer is that it taste great. And no, I'm not just saying that. You have to stop thinking of it as butter, and start understanding that at the end of the day, it is just heavy cream. If you put butter and cinnamon in your coffee, it taste amazing. Now, again, we are talking grass fed butter here, not just any old butter. The most popular is Kerrygold butter, but if you have a store that sells local products you can likely find whatever suits you.
The point in all of this? Your morning coffee can be a true health bomb!
Reader Comments
Some put raw egg in their coffee
It's called Swedish egg coffee and the Swedes in Minnesota make it at social events and sometimes at coffee houses. Removes the bitterness and acidity:
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Good info! I'm using butter in coffee and tea for two days and I'm really enjoying.
Thanks for advice!
articles where the explorer sits down inside the yurt and has a delicious cup of yak butter tea!
They never claimed it was as good as this tho.
Yes, grass butter is fantastic. I wonder tho just how much of the butter in this country is grass fed butter?
I was reading a site (possibly here at sott) that said in passing most of the butter in this country came from feed-lot cows.
This was very disheartening to me as I had imagined the contented cows grazing in clover, if only for the summer. Happy to see K2 as a benefit of grass fed butter. Until a week ago I had assumed natto had the 'good stuff' and now I find that it is natto and sauerkraut! And grass butter! And Brie cheese!