Food Quackery

Published on December 27th, 2014 | by Rayne

5

The Bulletproof Diet: Butter in the coffee of people who don’t want to exercise

The Bulletproof Diet. I came across this new nasty tasty diet fad recently via a friend of my wife’s. The Bulletproof Diet is like the lovechild of gullibility, laziness and pseudoscience wrapped up in a package designed for insecure scientifically illiterate people who want an easy way to lose weight without having to do any work.

The basics of the Bulletproof Diet combines cherry picked studies that are misinterpreted by the creator of the diet with doing unspeakable things to your morning cup of coffee. The diet itself consists of 14 steps for following the diet that ultimately results in eliminating easily accessible food in favour of expensive products sold off said creators website.

Diet fad creator Dave Asprey was a former Silicon Valley investor and self-proclaimed “Biohacker” with no nutritional based qualifications,  who – like many diet fad creators before him – found the “secret” to weight loss because apparently eating more vegetables and fruit and exercising regularly is fucking hard. The story goes that he found the “secret” to weight loss after hiking in Tibet where he realised drinking a hot drink in a cold environment kicked arse. After investing a lot money into research, the result was a bag of coffee beans with his diet fad’s name on it and a recipe for a cup of coffee using butter instead of milk. There is also a 14 step guide to a change in diet which as previously mentioned means eliminating a lot of food. He provides proof of the diet’s abilities by claiming to have “upgraded his brain by >20 IQ points, lowered his biological age, and lost 100 lbs without using calories or exercise” (source).

For the record, coffee with butter in it is fucking gross. For the sake of science and this blog I tried it and it fucking sucks. It just sucks. I cannot emphasis how hard it sucks. It tastes like my arse gave birth to my feet and my feet then stopped showering for a week.

Has does the Bulletproof Diet work?
From the article “The Cult of Bulletproof Coffee“: 
“The recipe — a riff on the yak butter tea Mr. Asprey found restorative while hiking in Tibet — calls for low-mold coffee beans; at least two tablespoons of unsalted butter (grass-fed, which is higher in Omega 3s and vitamins); and one to two tablespoons of medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil, a type of easily digestible fat. Mr. Asprey claims having the 450-plus-calorie cup of coffee instead of breakfast suppresses hunger, promotes weight loss and provides mental clarity.

“It’s a gateway drug for taking control of your own biology,” said the well-caffeinated Mr. Asprey. Consider the strength of the addiction: At a three-day Bulletproof conference in Pasadena, Calif., in September, 200 pounds of Kerrygold butter wasn’t enough for the 500 attendees. There was also a run on unsalted grass-fed butter at the nearest Whole Foods” (source).

From Dave Aspreys website: “I learned about the power of butter at 18,000 feet of elevation near Mt. Kailash in Tibet.  I staggered into a guest house from the -10 degree weather and was literally rejuvenated by a creamy cup of yak butter tea. The biohacker in me asked, “why?” and after a couple years of careful research, that was the genesis of the recipe below, which is today, used by Billboard recording artists before they go on stage, world champion athletes, and some of the world’s top executives, because it has a massive impact on cognitive function”

Bold is my emphasis – I think I know the reason Dave was “literally rejuvenated” by a hot beverage – it was fucking cold where he was located and hot beverages -shock horror- make you feel warm and good when you’re cold. The diet is meant to be an updated version of the debunked Paleo diet. It promises to give you abs with no exercise by eating 4,000+ KCal per day and sleeping 5 hours per night.

The claims of the Bulletproof Diet:
“So, I use the lowest toxin, highest performance coffee there is (I know, because I created it and tested it!) I brew it, and then I blend unsalted, grass-fed butter into it, along with an extract of coconut oil that improves brain energy” (source).
“Grass-fed butter is much healthier than other butter” (source).
“Starting your day with grass-fed butter will give you lots of energy and it will give your body healthy fats that it will use to make cell walls and hormones” (source).
“You will experience one of the best mornings of your life, with boundless energy and focus” (source). – Authors note: We call this “preparing your audience for a placebo effect.

Try as I might, I can’t find any research on the website about how adding butter to your coffee actually loses weight or does any of the things the website claims adding butter to your coffee does except a few unclear paragraphs about high fat breakfast substitutes. I can however find the following red flags of pseudoscience:

The diet itself:
To become Bulletproof, according to the website (“reclaiming energy and focus” and “upgrading your life”) you need to eliminate your intake of gluten, various grains, dairy, brown rice, and sugar, stop eating legumes, and eliminate nearly all fruit (not completely but drastically reduce your intake) because it’s basically on the same level as junk food. Eating raw or barely cooked organic vegetables and no more than two servings of organic fruit and excessive amounts of grass fed protein makes up the rest of the diet. According to Asprey “Target 50-60% of calories from healthy fats, 20% from protein, and the rest from vegetables” (source) except the studies he uses as evidence to back up his assertions have either been debunked, misinterpreted or are of poor quality.

The vox article “The Bulletproof Diet is everything wrong with eating in America” goes into more detail about the failings of the Bulletproof diet, same goes for the New York Times “The Cult of the Bulletproof Coffee Diet“.  If you download the Bulletproof Diet roadmap pdf, you’ll find that Asprey ranks foods from “toxic” to Bulletproof with -not surprisingly- his own brand of food to be at the top of the list which is another red flag. Nowhere on the Bulletproof website are studies conducted on the efficiency and safety of the diet itself – you’d think for a guy who invested thousands of dollars into researching and designing the diet, he would sink a few more dollars into high quality studies to give supporting evidence the diet does what he says it does.

As mentioned previously, one of the claims of the diet is to get abs by no exercise. Basically drink coffee and the weight will fall off and somehow tighten your abdominal muscles in a way that will make even lesbians drool. Asprey makes this claims on the following blog entry: “Photo: Abs After 2 Years of 4500 Calories & No Exercise“.

“The photo in this post is taken under these conditions:

• I have slept less than 5 hours per night on average for 2 continuous years, on purpose, because I am busy.
• I took the photo after I landed, following 20 hours in transit from Victoria, BC to the Philippines, by way of Narita, Japan, with no sleep along the way. The Crowne Plaza bathtub is behind me!
• My grand total exercise in the last 2 years is 4 soft yoga classes completed 6 months ago, plus two five-minute kettelbell swing sessions two weeks before the photo. That’s it.
• I have eaten between 4,000 and 4,500 calories per day on average of The Bulletproof Diet for 2 years
• I used to weigh 300 lbs when I was obese“

One commenter on the blog takes issue with this statement:

“Donna Clements: are you kidding me? Those are your abs WITHOUT exercise? How in the world can that be so
Dave Asprey: I am entirely serious. It’s because I stack mTOR by using coffee with Bulletproof Intermittent fasting. mTOR builds muscle.”

mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) is a protein that regulates cell growth, cell proliferation, cell motility, cell survival, protein synthesis, and monitors nutrient availability, cellular energy levels and oxygen levels among other functions (source). I guess Dave forgot to mention that caffeine inhibits mTOR function not increases it.

Grass fed butter:
Asprey also claims that the use of grass-fed butter in your coffee (made with his special coffee beans) is a “catalyst” towards having more energy, losing weight and gaining muscle. To quote his website: “It’s no secret that grass-fed butter is one of the most Bulletproof foods you can eat. It’s high in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and healthy fats. It makes anything taste good, and it turns coffee into a delicious milkshake. Butter is so magical it deserved an infographic“.

Grass fed butter, oh the imagery. How on earth does that work? Well I would assume you’re not actually feeding the butter grass but feeding grass to the cow that gave you the milk the butter is made from. I thought Dave wanted us to cut dairy from our diets? Dave likes Kerrygold grass fed butter despite it not being organic, he says he doesn’t want his hard-earned money to go towards GMOs (except in the case of Kerrygold Butter_. I wonder if he gets a cut of the profits? Sounds a bit like Food Babe tactics.

Just plain laughable woo:
This is my favourite: “You can use light to affect your mitochondrial function.  Just hold a red LED light to the place where you want a boost – your stomach, a sore muscle, or up your nose if you want to bump up your brain — for a few minutes, and you will experience more mitochondrial activity, meaning more cellular energy and better cellular communication” (source).

I have no words for the above quote.

If the amount of testimonials on Dave’s website is any indication – quite a few people believe that Bulletproof coffee is a magic cure-all to improving their life and losing weight without having to do any work. Having a closer look at Dave’s blog, there are many comments from people who are dissatisfied with his diet plan which is no surprise because a high fat diet with utterly no exercise is not going to shift fat.

For those who have noticed improvements, following the diet means restricting carb intake, which results in less calories and consuming a high fat breakfast but nothing for the rest of the morning. If you have reduced the stress in your life and followed the steps about relaxation, of course you’re going to find differences in your weight and energy levels. You’re drinking caffeine which makes you alert and starving your body by restricting calories, this does not mean you’re actually eating healthy.

Losing weight isn’t hard. Find a good dietician and a personal trainer. Walk more, join a gym. Talk to your doctor about finding a qualified professional to create an exercise plan suited to your needs. Don’t buy into scam products and snakeoil salesmen marketed to those who don’t want to have to do any work. Snakeoil salesman are able to continue selling their crap and peddling their woo because they prey on people who want quick fixes to life’s problems. Staying fit and healthy takes work that you need to be prepared to do.

Tags: Food Quackery, Hoax Scam

About the Author

Rayne

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