Looking for a delicious and healthy way to start your morning? Olive oil coffee is a unique coffee beverage gaining popularity around the world due to its numerous health benefits, as well as its rich velvety flavor. Olive oil coffee is made by combining freshly brewed hot or cold coffee with a spoonful of quality extra-virgin olive oil. Not only does this combination provide an energy boost but it also contains essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals that can help improve overall health.
We’ll take a look at olive oil coffee, discuss old and new trends, including of course, some of the best ways to enjoy this unique cup of joe. But first, lets open up discussing how Starbucks is trying to lead the way on this old but new trending style of coffee.
Olive Oil Coffee & Starbucks
We’ve mentioned before how the rather infamous Howard Shultz has a knack for integrating the European coffee experience into American culture. Let’s face it, as savvy as Howard might have been in the good old days for bringing Italian café culture to western shores is impressive, is his newest push for olive oil coffee such a good idea? Here’s a story that you might want to try for yourself.
Visionary Or Villain?
The name Howard Schultz for most coffee aficionados will either make you cringe or cry out for justice. The fact that he singlehandedly roped in an eventual buyout of the original Starbucks owners at a time of desperation is truly legendary. He also made it possible to tap into a popular European drink called the frappe and turned it into their best-selling coffee drink called the Frappuccino.
Just as the Aeropress coffee founder Alan Alder found cult-like status for his brew anywhere coffee invention, he best managed to reinvent the Frisbee with his own Aerobie version. And putting biased opinions on the side, it’s fair enough to look very closely at Starbucks’ newest rollout that is touting Olive Oil Coffee to a young consumer base.
Here are some very interesting facts that you might not know about this little-known coffee recipe.
Olive Oil Coffee History
The brand new Oleato coffee beverage that Starbucks has just premiered is not a new concept and is a total rip-off- Full Stop. Not to burst the news bubble that all media outlets are touting with much fanfare, this is a blatant theft of concept that goes back to another big craze that nearly broke the internet when it was first introduced. If you remember how Bulletproof Coffee took the coffee world by storm, you’ll remember a familiar name…
The Dave Asprey Connection
Ahhh yes, Dave Asprey’s innovative Bulletproof Coffee, and the magic elixir properties that it toted… You might recall the magical story of how he traveled to Tibet in 2004 and discovered how the properties of adding Yak butter to his coffee turned him into Superman. Funny, how he took another 5 years to publish this info on his blog in 2009. Well, if you haven’t read this fine tale, we’ve covered this in great detail.
Dave likes to tell us that it’s brain fuel, but it’s really just another snake oil sales pitch we’ve all heard before. Don’t forget to buy his book since he’s seemingly going to take down Tony Robbins with his much-hyped Biohacking range of products.
Olive Oil Coffee Was Born From Bulletproof Coffee Recipe Variants
Bet you’ll want some bullet (proof) for this one folks, so here’s the deep internet dive that will bring back ‘Things that make you go Hmmm’.
We can all thank Kristen Helmstetter (aka (Brisa Starr) for hitting the nail right on the head way back in 2017! She was among the very first to bring up the idea of putting olive oil in coffee in her coffee blog.
She directly mentions that her inspiration was from Bulletproof coffee. In short, it’s a variant that is essentially making Bulletproof coffee with unsalted butter and olive oil.
Brisa Starr Olive Oil Coffee Recipe
Ingredients
- 10-12 Ounces organic coffee (fresh-brewed)
- 1 Tbsp olive oil (extra virgin)
- 1 Tbsp grass-fed butter (unsalted)
- Dash of Cinnamon (for taste)
Instructions
- Add everything into a coffee mug
- Mix everything together using a battery-powered coffee whisk
- Drink it quick- since both butter and oil will separate and float to the surface
Need More Proof?
Another blog post that emerged in 2017 was from a little-known olive oil company based in Chile. They were quick to jump on the Bulletproof coffee craze and pushed the idea to put olive oil in coffee as an alternative to adding butter. Not only did they say that butter was an unhealthy choice in coffee, they even give their estimate on how much olive oil to replace butter in Bulletproof coffee.
They recommend 2¼ teaspoons of olive oil for every tablespoon of butter that??s replaced. Then again, this can be modified for personal taste since results will vary if you’re using extra virgin olive oil. They further promised to present their Superman Laser Vision Proof Coffee recipe, which never seemed to get mentioned again… We wonder why? Another olive oil company did another write-up using the same concept a few months later in 2018.
Heath Risks You Should Be Wary About
You can’t make this kind of comparison without some kind of nutritional facts to support some very obvious flaws in making olive oil coffee. Using stats that came from a 2020 nutritional content report from USDA and NIH data, these two ingredients were actually compared side by side. And while those sticking to a Keto diet will be very interested, to know that olive oil has 884 calories per 100 grams.
This is an over-inflated number of course since most recipes call for 1 tbsp. of olive oil which would equal 13.3 grams of fat. This means that each cup of coffee has 120 calories per cup. Unsalted butter contains 102 calories and has 7.292 grams of fat per tablespoon. You can ultimately see that butter is better, but is still packing in the calories.
In early February 2022, some clever folks at yet another olive oil company (are you starting to get the connection here?) did a 7-day bulletproof coffee/olive oil trial. The results were inconclusive at best. It seems that olive oil companies are looking to sell you (what else) magic elixir for your coffee. Then again, coffee experts agree that more than 2 teaspoons of olive oil in coffee can have an immediate reaction to increasing laxative effects.
We already know that coffee already makes you urinate faster than a racehorse looking for the finish line, but three teaspoons is an entire tablespoon! Holy crap Batman and no one is calling out Starbucks just yet? But to be fair, here is the official Starbucks recipe for Olive Oil Coffee.
Starbucks Oleato Olive Oil Copycat Coffee Recipe
There are three different variants that Starbucks have introduced but two of them contain the same ingredients that combine oak milk and olive oil. Since it’s natural to assume that water and oil don’t mix, the combo to create an emulsifier using oat milk does the trick. This is what keeps the olive oil from making a very obvious oil slick in your coffee.
We recommend using a French Press to get the best results, however, and handy espresso machine will give you similar results. Using a French Press just allows you to have crisp high notes with a full-bodied flavor over traditional brewing results.
Starbucks Copycat Oleato Latte
Ingredients
- 8-10 Ounces fresh-brewed coffee or more (per mug)
- 1 Tbsp (extra-virgin) olive oil (Partanna olive oil)
- ¼ Cup oat milk
- Dash of flavored syrup (as you like for flavor)
Instructions
- Brew your coffee and prepare your latte foam separate in a slim and tall glass cup
- Use a battery-operated coffee mixer to blend the oat mix and olive oil until creamy smooth
- Pour your coffee and add your syrup as you like
- Pour the oat milk and oil mix into your coffee cup and mix as you like
- Enjoy your finished olive oil coffee