The Truth about Coconut Oil

As a result of the June 2017 American Heart Association review Coconut oil has been in the news recently advising against its use. The review states that coconut oil is 82% saturated fat and is as bad for your heart like other oils high in saturated fat, including butter and palm oil.

In a lecture gone viral, Karin Michels a Harvard professor of epidemiology, joined the debate, calling it “pure poison”

He went against the popular oil in a 50-minute video, saying that coconut oil “is one of the worst foods you can eat” and is worse than lard due to its high amount of saturated fatty acids

High saturated fat in our diet, typically solid at room temperature, has been linked to heart disease, high cholesterol and other health problems. Other foods that are high in saturated fat include palm oil, lard, and high-fat dairy products such as butter and cheese.

Let me make some things clear:

• Not one single study shows that coconut oil causes heart disease. Not one.
• The whole issue against coconut oil is founded on the diet-heart hypothesis that has been proven wrong: Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol. LDL cholesterol causes heart disease. Anything that raises LDL cholesterol is bad. Only problem is that the data does not support this hypothesis.

The truth is low fat diets cause heart disease.

The American Heart Association gave the bad advices for decades: first “fat is bad and will kill us”. Second to eat diets rich in starchy carbs

But now, researches proved that two ideas wrong.

The very conservative 2015 USDA Dietary Guidelines removed any upper limits on dietary fat and eliminated any restrictions on dietary cholesterol. In fact, after years of telling us to avoid eggs and shrimp they said, “Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”

How could this happen we wonder? How could Science get it so wrong? It all comes down to how they do the research.

Most nutrition researches are based on what we call observational studies. They follow a group of people for a long time, they ask them what they ate on a recall questionnaire: Relying on their memory and honesty!! Thinking that fat is bad they will underreport it.

Those kinds of studies do not prove cause and effect, just correlation.

So, is coconut oil healthy?

Kale is healthy; if that’s all you ate you would get sick. Coconut oil is healthy but only as part of an overall healthy diet.

Coconut oil has been consumed by the South Pacific populations in for thousands of years without ill effect.

It has so many health benefits.

• It improves the quality, size and type of cholesterol
• It raises the good cholesterol, HDL.
• It lowers the total cholesterol to HDL ratio – a far better predictor of heart disease than LDL.
• It also contains a unique type of Medium chain Triglyceride saturated fat called MCT oil that Promotes Weight Loss, boosts metabolism, improves cognitive function, reverses insulin resistance, may Reduce Lactate Buildup in Athletes and Help Use Fat for Energy, Could Help Manage Epilepsy, Alzheimer’s Disease and Autism, Contains Powerful Fatty Acids That Fight Yeast and Bacterial Growth.
• Coconut oil is also anti-fungal, anti-microbial, and it contains lauric acid that is excellent for immune function The only other good source of lauric acid is breast milk, which contains 24% saturated fat – far higher than the 6% the American Heart Association recommends.