tter and coffee often are staples in a lot of people’s morning meals but never together in the same cup. When I first heard of buttered coffee, I immediately thought it was a bad idea. I had no doubts that it could make my cup of black coffee more delicious but the image of a pat of fat wading in the center of my cup made me queasy. And fat makes fat, right? But, would you try it if someone told you that some butter in your coffee would give you more energy throughout the day AND actually curb your appetite? That’s actually the claim of buttered coffee.

Buttered coffee came into popularity thanks to a guy named Dave Asprey who called his creation Bulletproof Coffee. Dave is pretty obsessed with getting healthy and always looked for ways to optimize the body’s capacity to perform. Buttered coffee contains not only coffee and butter, but also has MCT (medium-chain triglycerides) oil thrown into the mix. He believed that taking your caffeine with healthy fats will boost your energy, rev up your metabolism, and help you stay satiated throughout morning.The question that everybody wants answered is How?.

Caffeine (from the coffee, of course) blocks the sleep-inducing hormone called adenosine while boosting other hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and glutamate (feel-good, brain-boosting good guys of a hormone). This explain the jolt of alertness and mental clarity that we feel after consuming coffee. Adding fat to coffee speeds up the rate in which caffeine is absorbed by the body, making its effects kick in sooner. The tricky part is that not just any fat will do. It has to be the good kind of fat.

Butyrate is a good kind of fat. It is a short-chain fatty acid found in real butter. When added to coffee, it will not only make the body’s absorption of caffeine faster but will also increase your metabolism, burning off your body’s fat stores.

Now for the mysterious third ingredient: MCT oil. MCT oil is another kind of good fat. One example of an MCT oil is coconut oil. It is easily metabolized by the body, giving you an energy boost while keeping you trim (because it is burned off quickly and not stored in the body). Moreover, MCT oil can increase good cholesterol and can be very satisfying, keeping hunger and cravings at bay. That’s actually pretty awesome if you ask us.

Together, these three ingredients make up for a fat-busting, energy-boosting superdrink.

But does it work? Well, there are quite a lot of Bulletproof Coffee drinkers who say it does. And there’s no really harm in trying it for a morning. Doctors and other experts like to give a word of warning though: limit your intake of saturated fats (like butter). So if you’re going to indulge in a cup of buttered coffee for breakfast, take it easy or better yet, steer clear from other fatty foods during the rest of your day.