A couple of week back I saw a socialite come pseudo-nutritionist post
a picture of her ‘healthy’ breakfast. It was bacon. Cooked in coconut
oil.
Coconut oil in
smoothies. Coconut oil in porridge. Coconut oil in your damn coffee.
It’s everywhere; it must be healthy, right? (I’m not even going to
touch the bacon thing rn).
Whole Foods (who
exclusively sell healthy things), reported they sold
6 tonnes of coconut oil in February 2015 alone. Coconut oil
evangelists
rave that it ‘boosts metabolism’, makes your skin ‘glow’, (presumably
in the dark?), is heart healthy, prevents dementia, reduces cholesterol,
helps you lose weight, boosts the immune system, cures diabetes,
Crohn’s disease and IBS.
Not to be a total downer,
but it’s all BS.
This is another example of marketing getting one over on science, and then laughing in its face. Recently, the
British Nutrition Foundation published a review of the available evidence around coconut oil, and basically, they’re pissed.
Coconut oil is
99.9% fatty acids. Of those, 92% are saturated fats. Just to put that
into perspective - butter is about 60% saturated fat (not that you
should be going HAM on butter either). Just in case you forgot,
saturated fats are the things that raise your LDL-cholesterol (bad) and
raise your risk of heart disease (very bad). Heart disease is the number
one killer of human people in the US and number two in the UK. Not
cool, you guys.
UK dietary guidelines
say you need to keep saturated fats to less than 11% of calories, about
20g for women, and about 30g for men. And just to be clear, that’s the
upper limit. And if you still don’t think that dietary saturated fats
are linked to heart disease, well then you can
get in the bin.
Source
