How Can I Enjoy Coconut Oil...Its A Saturated Fat?
2/26/2006
Yes, coconut oil is a saturated fat. In fact it’s really saturated. At 92% I don’t know of any fat that is more saturated. So if you have been paying attention to the message broadcast by the vast majority of the voices in the healthcare establishment for these last 40 years, you know saturated fats are claimed to be one of the leading causes of heart disease and death. Why do saturated fats cause heart disease and death? The answer most often given is that saturated fats either stimulate cholesterol production in the human liver or that they directly contain animal cholesterol. The common belief claims atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) is from too much cholesterol in the blood. This is called the cholesterol or lipid hypothesis of heart disease. Is this what you believe? Personally I don’t believe that saturated fats and cholesterol are the cause of heart disease and death.
Most of us are not fond of holding a belief that no one else supports. It’s lonely but in my rejection of the lipid hypothesis, I am hardly a lone voice. There is a continually growing body of MDs, DOs, lipid researchers, scientists, PhDs in nutrition, nutritional counselors and advisors who no longer believe in the afore mentioned lipid hypothesis because it just doesn’t fit with the facts.
As an amatuer scientist with no government grants, I find the most compelling experiments regarding human nutrition to be those carried out in the living laboratories of human populations all around our earth. For thousands of years the peoples of the South Pacific, Polynesians, Philippinos, Malaysians, and East Indians have used coconut oil as a major source of cooking fat and in some cases it is the sole source. In India coconut is an essential medicinal ingredient. Other Island peoples consider it the cure for most diseases.
The Pukapuka and Tokelau South Pacific islanders provided scientific researchers with an indigenous population still practicing age-old native dietary customs. The ten-year multidisciplinary study of the 2500 or so people living on both islands began in the 1960s. Coconut oil and other coconut derivatives were one of the primary food sources along with ocean fish, pigs, chickens, taro root, and rice. Dr.Ian Prior, M.D., who lead a portion of the studies said, “ Vascular disease is uncommon in both populations and there is no evidence of the high saturated-fat intake having a harmful effect in these populations.” Though the total energy from coconut fat for these islanders is 34%, atherosclerosis, heart disease, colitis, colon cancer, hemorrhoids, ulcers, diverticulosis, and appendicitis are rare.
The lipid hypothesis is contradicted in many other parts of the world as well. The French love butter and cream yet are relatively free from heart disease much to the consternation of researchers. The Masai of East Kenya feast on fresh raw (unpasteurized) full fat saturated, cholesterol loaded cow’s milk, about a gallon per day, which supplies about 60% of their daily calories. Yet no heart disease. The Eskimo peoples eat about nine pounds of seal meat and fat each day in their frozen world. Yet no heart disease. In 1963 the Harvard School of Public Health, aware that the heart disease rate in the US was four times higher than in Ireland but that the rate became the same when Irish immigrants lived here for ten years or more, decided to find out why. Testing revealed the native Irish had vastly superior cardiovascular health compared to the Americans despite the Irish consumption of significantly more saturated fats and cholesterol. The probable reason for the disparity: Americans consumed their fat in the form of polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Sri Lankans on average consume 90 coconuts per year and if coconut oil is factored in the number increases to 120. Yet their rate of heart disease is far lower than non-coconut eaters. Coconut researcher P.K. Thampan concludes there is no correlation between coconut oil consumption and heart disease. The real Mediterranean diet, unlike the pop-culture Mediterranean diet cookbooks, is high in saturated fats from goat cheese, lamb, butter, and native sausages yet they have low CHD rates.
These real life population studies point to an even greater reality: Something other than cholesterol and saturated fat is causing heart disease to be the leading cause of death in the United States despite what some (not all) of the experts have taught for many years. For instance listen to these contrary voices:
Charles McGee M.D. in his book, Heart Frauds, wrote, “The cholesterol theory is not compatible with the history of coronary heart disease. Dietary consumption of fats and cholesterol does not effect blood levels of cholesterol significantly in most people.”
Dr. Michael DeBakey, a heart surgeon, found that out of 1,700 patients who had severe atherosclerosis, only one patient in five had high blood cholesterol.
In 1981, the National Institutes of Health completed a study 16,000 healthy middle-aged men. The most significant finding was that those who had heart attacks had eaten more polyunsaturated fats than those who had not, contrary to the lipid hypothesis.
And further, Dr. Mary Enig (one of the world’s foremost lipid authorities) in a speech presented at the Lauric Oils Symposium in 1996 documented statements by leading health authorities contrary to the saturated fat cholesterol theory of heart disease:
Harvard’s Dr. Walter Willett M.D. in the American Journal of Public Health (1990) acknowledged that even though, “the focus of dietary recommendations is usually a reduction of saturated fat intake, no relation between saturated fat intake and risk of CHD was observed in the most informative prospective study to date.”
The Framingham Study’, William P. Castelli, in the Archives of Internal Medicine (1992) wrote, “...in Framingham, Mass, the more saturated fat one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol...the opposite of what the equations provided by Hegsted et al (1965) and Keys et al (1957) would predict...”
Castelli further admitted that, “...in Framingham, for example, we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least, and were the most physically active.”
Dr. Joseph Mercola D.O. in his book, the No-Grain Diet (2003) wrote, “A chorus of voices, including the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, claims that animal fat is linked not only with heart disease but also with various cancers. Yet when researchers from the University of Maryland analyzed the data upon which these claims were based, they found that vegetable fat consumption was correlated with cancer and animal fat was not.”(emphasis mine)
The forces allied against real butter, real grass fed cow’s milk (skim milk and 2% milk are not real milks), grass fed beef and lamb, free range chickens and their eggs are vocal and have well funded lobbyists arguing their cases in the halls of congress. Nevertheless the enthusiasts for real whole foods should not be unduly dismayed. Coconut oil, milk, and cream (yes coconut cream that can be whipped just like dairy cream) are enjoying a comeback. Researchers have discovered and documented many benefits of medium chain fatty acids (MCFA) and by far one of the richest sources is found in coconut oil. Dr. Bruce Fife, N.D lists some of coconut oil’s benefits:
Boosts energy and endurance
It’s lower in calories than all other fats
Supports thyroid function
Reduces chronic inflammation
Promotes weight loss by increasing metabolic rate
Functions as a protective antioxidant
Helps protect the body from breast, colon, and other cancers
Expels or kills tapeworms, lice, giardia, and other parasites
Does not increase cholesterol or platelet stickiness
Utilized for body energy instead of fat storage
Improves insulin secretion and glucose utilization
Protects against viruses that cause mono, influenza, measles, and herpes
Protects against bacteria causing pneumonia, earache, throat infections, dental cavities, food poisoning, urinary tract infections, and meningitis
Protects against fungi and yeast that cause candida
Supports and aids the immune system
Dr. Fife quotes Jon Kabara, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacology, Michigan State University, “ Contrary to what is generally believed by both the lay public and the medical profession, the saturated fats found in coconut oil are actually good for you. This should not be surprising since Nature has always provided man with agents against illness. Historically coconut oil is one of the earliest oils to be used for food and as a pharmaceutical. Ayrevedic literature long promoted the health and cosmetic benefits of coconut oil. Even today the Asian Pacific community, which may represent half the world’s population, uses coconut oil in one form or another. Studies on people, who live in tropical climates and who have a diet high in coconut oil are healthier, have less heart disease, cancer, and colon and prostrate problems. It is rare in the history of medicine to find substances that have such useful properties and still be without toxicity or even harmful side effects.”
Ray Peat, Ph.D., author and researcher, comments about another benefit which I have personally experienced and can testify to, “Coconut and olive oil are the only vegetable oils that are really safe, but butter, which is highly saturated, is generally quite safe. For those of us who use coconut oil consistently, one of the most noticeable changes is the ability to go for several hours without eating, and to feel hungry without having symptoms of hypoglycemia.”
Remember all you food lovers and seekers of a long healthspan, forty or so years ago we were all told to stop eating butter, drinking full fat milk, eating beef, eggs were out, chicken skin had to be removed, and instead we listened to Parkay, Imperial, and Blue Bonnet margarine commercials, Wesson Oil and Mazola Corn Oil were on every shelf, every commercial baker stopped using coconut oil in their products and the new world of trans-fats became the norm. Now in 2006, trans-fats have been judged to be twice as harmful as butter by the same establishment that urged all those polyunsaturated and hydrogenated oils upon the really pretty innocent consumer, claiming they would prevent heart disease which of course they didn’t.
For thousands of years humans ate omnivorously, enjoying saturated animal fats, saturated coconut oil, and animal foods of all kinds including liver, kidney and heart. The only common seed oil was sesame which contains a powerful antioxidant and of course there was the universal magic of olive oil. You will find it very informative to do a little investigating regarding the incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, in short most of our modern diseases, before let’s say 1920. You won’t find much.
So can you safely enjoy coconut oil and even butter? The historical record says you can and nutritional research is slowly catching up with the past, reporting that “traditional” fats and oils not only taste good but are essential for our health.
Stephen Yochum Whole Foods Resources February 24, 2006
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