I recently saw a client who had started eating spoonfuls of coconut oil to help her cholesterol levels.
In fact, the use of coconut products is a growing trend. According to its advocates, coconut oil is a powerful tool to help many health problems including weight loss, Alzheimers, cancer and diabetes.
Should we all be consuming this superfood?
Coconut is a unique plant, because unlike most vegetable oils, 90 per cent of its fat is saturated fat (compare this with butter, which is about 68 per cent saturated fat).
In our current understanding of fats, saturated fat is one of the fats we want to cut down on. In excess, it is known to raise our bad cholesterol levels. Most regulating health bodies recommend limiting saturated fat to less than 10 per cent of your calories. This is equivalent to about two tablespoons of butter (or coconut oil) daily. Unfortunately, saturated fat is also high in meat, chocolate and full-fat milk products. Most of us easily exceed our daily quota for saturated fat without extra tablespoons of butter or coconut oil. Currently, a healthy diet can be 20-35 per cent of its calories from fat, but we want most of these fats to be unsaturated fats – fats found naturally in whole grains, nuts, seeds, fish and vegetables.
That being said, is there something special about coconut oil? There are limited studies on coconut oil, and the supporting data is either anecdotal or from too small a sample size to be taken seriously. Coconut oil does contain an unusual blend of short and medium chain fatty acids that may offer some health benefits. Also, being a plant, may have some beneficial chemicals that we have not yet discovered. However, to date there is insufficient evidence to recommend it as a health product.
While coconut oil is vegan and delicious, it remains high in saturated fat and calories (one tablespoon has 115 calories and 12 grams saturated fat with little vitamins or minerals). And for $20 a pint, you may want to spend your health dollars elsewhere.