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What's The Deal With Butter Coffee?

By Melissa McEwen in Food on Jun 30, 2014 6:00PM

Now that Time has declared the war on dietary fat over and made a curl of butter their cover model, it’s a great time to find excuses to eat more butter. And some people have decided to drink rather than eat it by making something called butter coffee.

When I went to Ugly Mug Cafe (1458 W. Chicago Ave.) and ordered a butter coffee to go, it wasn’t my first buttered caffeine drink rodeo. In New York City there are a handful of Tibetan restaurants that serve a traditional cup of butter tea, and diet guru Dave Asprey decided to try it in coffee and market it as a diet drink alongside the questionable claim that regular coffee contains mold “toxins.”

Now if the notion of a butter-based diet drink confuses you, it’s worth remembering the now long passed low-carb Atkins craze. I bet you thought low-carb went belly up when all those low-carb snack super stores declared bankruptcy. Instead it went underground and got more sophisticated, merging with other dietary movements along the way. The modern butter-drinking dieter probably calls themselves paleo or ketogenic rather than low-carb. And rather than faux-sugar laced energy bars, they prize grass-fed meats and butter.

Butter coffee might sound nonsensical to you, but for someone on a ketogenic diet it makes perfect sense. Not to be confused with the pathological diabetic ketoacidosis, ketogenic dieters burn ketones rather than glucose for energy. They do this by heavily restricting carbohydrates. Why would someone choose such a regime of torture? Some preliminary studies show it is an effective treatment for diseases like epilepsy and many people find it helps them lose weight and control their blood sugar.

But at least they get to eat unlimited steak, right? Therein lies the problem, as it turns out excessive protein can kick people out of ketosis. They need fat, and lots of it, particularly if they are as active as a Tibetan yak farmer.

I confess, I have made butter coffee a few times at home. But my laziness means that it’s more like coffee with an unpleasant slick of oil on top than anything smooth and buttery. From DNAInfo Chicago I learned Ugly Mug makes theirs with much more care—the butter is perfectly blended in. Beatrix (519 N. Clark St.) apparently makes a smooth butter coffee too.

The butter coffee at Ugly Mug was creamy and delicious, especially with the cinnamon, but make sure to drink it while it’s hot or it will congeal. I drank it on an empty stomach around lunch time and wasn’t hungry until later that night. For those who are very satisfied with fat, it does seem to reduce the appetite effectively, but that means the remaining meal or meals you eat better be fairly nutrient dense. Butter has some vitamins, but certainly isn’t going to provide you with all the day’s essential nutrients.

Also, you won’t need lip balm for the rest of the day, as getting the butter on your lips is almost inevitable. Butter coffee isn’t as bad as some people say it is. Nor is it magical. It’s great for those on special diets (it’s also lactose-free), but the rest of us might want to get our servings of butter layered in something like a croissant or one of the Kouign-amann at Bad Wolf Coffee or Cellar Door Provisions.