There's a quiet health revolution going on at the end of an alley in Sheung Wan, where superfoods store Anything But Salads is serving up "bulletproof coffee", a drink invented by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey.
Asprey has created a "bulletproof" way of life that involves bio-hacking your diet, mind and body. The philosophy feels like it was designed for astronauts tethered on earth, so to get a rocket-fuelled taste of the concept, I ordered a cup.
Anything But Salads' executive chef Delon Tuan blends upgraded coffee (toxin- and mould-free) with grass-fed, unsalted, organic butter and MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil. Inspired by the yak butter tea Asprey drank in Tibet, the bulletproof coffee is surprisingly smooth and creamy considering there's no milk.
It has an appealing flavour and a slightly sour aftertaste. It's coffee without the jitters or the crash; I feel a long period of sharpened mental performance and focus combined with zero appetite.
"It's a high-fat beginning to your day to kick-start your body into fat metabolism," says Calista Goh, founder of Anything But Salads.
"Naturally speaking, our bodies use their own fats as a fuel source. But in today's commercialised, processed world of foods, you don't get high-quality fats. Instead, we eat starches and sugars, and burn glucose for fuel. That isn't sustainable, and leads to blood sugar crashes."
According to nutritional therapist Lisa Fossey, founder of the Nutrition Clinic, adding fats to the coffee means the caffeine is absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream.
