Is adding butter and oil to black coffee a healthy beverage choice?
When a patient added bullet coffee to his diet, his cholesterol levels increased by a further 33%. Photo / Getty Images
Question: After recent blood tests, my GP told me I had high cholesterol and should review my diet. I’m an otherwise healthy 60-year-old, reasonably fit, light drinker, and eat healthily (very little red meat and no cheese). I immediately stopped my morning “bullet coffee”. What is the current thinking on diet and cholesterol management?
Answer: High cholesterol levels are linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, so optimising your diet to lower your LDL (bad cholesterol) level is an essential preventive action for health.
Bullet coffees – black coffees made with butter and MCT oil – are marketed as a healthy beverage, but research suggests they may worsen cholesterol levels in some people.
High cholesterol is defined as having too much LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, too little good HDL (high density lipoproteins) cholesterol, or both. So, the goal with dietary changes is to remove foods that increase LDL levels and add beneficial foods known to increase HDL cholesterol levels.
Bullet coffees are marketed as a healthy option that produces sustained energy, concentration and weight loss, and are popular with keto and paleo dieters despite a lack of scientific evidence to support these claims.
A clinical trial published in Current Developments in Nutrition in 2021found no benefit from bullet coffee over regular black coffee for improving cognitive performance.
More worryingly, a 2015 article in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology detailed the case of a 59-year-old male diagnosed with high cholesterol who ditched his prescribed cholesterol medication and started drinking bullet coffee, significantly worsening his condition.
The patient’s blood cholesterol levels doubled after discontinuing his cholesterol-lowering medication (rosuvastatin). When he added bullet coffee to his diet, his LDL levels increased by a further third.
An earlier report about a 39-year-old patient noted similar effects on cholesterol levels from bullet coffee. In this case, the patient had no previous cardiovascular risk factors. But after adding a bullet coffee to his daily diet, subsequent blood tests revealed high cholesterol levels.
Bullet coffee contains high amounts of saturated fats, which scientific evidence suggests cause raised LDL cholesterol levels. So, ditching them is a wise step to manage high cholesterol.