For quite some time now, I've payed attention to food ingredients that are "obviously" bad for your health, like for example, palm oil. Coconut oil has generally been placed in that same catagory - inexpensive, easy to use, and a saturated fat, like palm oil or lard... definitely a contributer of artery cloging.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm seeing references suggesting that coconut oil is the best thing for you health since spinach! Here's a portion of a recent artacle:

"What a strange journey it has been for coconut oil. Today, lipid researchers loud coconut oil for being a unique type of oil with numerous health benefits (lowers heart disease risk, aids weight loss, boosts immunity, and much more). But it was only a few decades ago that coconut oil was mistakenly vilified as an artery-clogging heart killer."

It goes on to suggest that there are different types of saturated fat molecules and that coconut oil is mostly made up of medium-chain fatty acids, which increases the body's metabolic rate, burning fat and improving the ratio of lean to fatty tissue.

I don't know, but it's hard for me to see how something could go from so bad to so good in a relatively short time. After all, it's still a saturated fat that's solid at room temperature (and also in your arteries?), like lard. Hard to know if this new analysis is legit, or just a high profit health food scam.

Glenn

I guess Coconut Oil is just the latest in a long line of substances that swing from one end to the other of the good/bad spectrum.

It's usually best to see if you can find out the source of the information. Many of these 'independent' labs, etc. aren't so independent when you find out who's funding their research, vested interests and so on, and so I get a bit skeptical right there.

And that's another thing I don't get. If a saturated fat can be solid at room temperature, wouldn't the higher temperature inside one's own body keep the saturated fat liquid? I suppose that depends on each individual saturated fat's melting point. Unless, of course, other chemical reactions within the body cause it to solidify in the arteries. Any meds here that can explain this?

I think the bigger thing is whether the oil is hydrogenated or not. I guess that is a process for taking an oil and making it solid or more solid and it produces trans fatty acids, which are bad for you.
Like so many things today, in it's natural state it is one thing, but after we cook it and inject and manipulate the molecules and put in the additives and such what we end up with is very different.
At least thats my limited understanding of the subject, it's not the oil it's the way it's processed.

A few years ago I had the good fortune to spend a few months in St. Tropez. I used coconut oil daily .... to keep my tan nice and brown!

How crazy is that looking back on it! Using coconut oil as sun lotion was asking for trouble! Still we live and learn!

(app. it is very good for your hair also!)
Best wishes
Tony

I'm not sure that the saturated fats aspect of coconut oil has any significance when used on the outside of the body. My own take on sunbathing, with or without skin protection, is something I don't care to take part in, given all the negativity on the subject.

Renig ... it was not the saturated fat that makes me regret my actions! I sizzled like a sausage and given what we know now wish I had not been so vain (or stupid!).
Best wishes
Tony

I drink green coconut margarettas. I'm working on my second one tonight! Hey this is a bar isn't it?

Cheers,

Gary

I use lemon oil for my guitars.
They don't get any more colour, but do look better.

Hhaayez baatenor ggmee anaaor oon of doze teerkielers, un wharde dat ga ga ga aa feler go thaat had da marguitaritters wid the big coconobs....BURP....

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Cheers....Pose

Oh boy, that's what I get for trying to get serious with a bunch of bar flys. Hic... I'm going back to the sober forum.