Coconut Oil Nutrition Facts

For many years fats have been unfairly lumped together as being all bad. Fats by themselves doesn’t necessarily cause disease, and can actually play a role in its prevention. The fact is that some fats are very bad for us and some fats are actually very good for us.

The past has shown that diets that restrict all fats fail when it comes to weight loss. Ever since the end of World War II, we have been told that we need to restrict saturated fat in our diets. So we switched to margarine from butter, and did what we could to restrict fat. We have been constantly told that the reason for our health problems is that we still eat too much fat, especially saturated fats.

Since we have been told to eat a low fat diet to lose weight, the results are that nearly two thirds of adults are now classified as overweight and more children are overweight now than ever before. Something must be wrong with that "logic", probably because we need special kinds of fats in our diets that we're not getting.

Most of us grew up being told that vegetable oils were the good oils and saturated fats were the bad ones. Now we are finding out that it is just the opposite. Diets that are moderate to high in “good” saturated fats and oils such as coconut oil, grapeseed oil, and olive oil are actually very good for us. Note that only coconut oil, grapeseed oil, and butter are the only oils you should ever cook with. Olive oil is good for you as long as you do not heat it.

What makes these healthy oils great is that they raise good cholesterol levels and lower bad cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure. As a matter of fact, people who started adding at least 4 tablespoons of coconut oil to their diets every day, have found that they can now lose weight when they could not before on a fat restricted diet. Sometimes the addition of these oils even helps with their health problems.

Polyunsaturated oils should be avoided, they carry toxic fatty acids (long chain fatty acids or LCT’s). LCT’s tend to produce fat in the body due to there complexity, your body takes longer to use the fats so it ends up storing them in the body. Polyunsaturated oils are the vegetable oils we commonly see in the grocery store, such as soy, corn, cottonseed, rapeseed(canola) and safflower oils.

We've been told that they lower cholesterol, but the way that they do it is not healthy, as it ends up collecting in the liver. These oils are easily oxidized and damaged by free radicals. When cooked they become rancid in a few hours, even in the refrigerator. This causes damage to our body at a cellular level, this ends up showing itself as problems like diabetes, cancer, hypothyroidism, and heart disease. Not to mention these oils help us to get fat, lower the metabolic rate in our bodies, help suppress the thyroid function and cause our skin to age quicker.

Trans-fat is one of the WORST of the fatty acids. Trans-fatty acids often appear on ingredient labels as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. It is what they do to vegetable oils to make them into hard fats such as margarine and vegetable shortening. It's used in the prepared food industry in baked goods like cookies, cakes, crackers, most peanut butter, and just about everything else we eat. It's typically added to prolong shelf life, and it's a cheap way of doing it.

These bad fats are used almost exclusively in fast foods that are fried. These oils are also sensitive to light, and turn rancid while still sitting on your supermarket shelves. Unlike Coconut oil, grapeseed oil, and butter which are healthy fats/oils, safe to cook with, and can be heated. When any other oil is heated it becomes a trans-fat, and when eaten they turn into something like poison in your system. It's like eating krazy glue, your body can not process this kind of chemically made fat. Trans-fats not only increase levels of bad cholesterol, but they will decrease levels of good cholesterol in the blood stream and trans-fatty acids have been linked to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Fats such as margarine, shortening, and any hydrogenated oils should be avoided like the plague, as well as foods items that contain them.

The FDA finally put forward an attempt to do something about trans-fats, in January 2006 they required food products to have a label showing the amount of trans-fat they have in them. You should be aware that trans-fats are found in over 40% of the products on our supermarket shelves. Scary isn't it?

The fatty acid chains in coconut oil are medium-chain fatty acids (MCT’s) and they promote weight loss by increasing the body’s metabolism to create energy. Coconut oil has become popular lately, because it has been discovered that coconut oil is nature’s richest source of MCT’s. If you decide to add coconut oil to your diet be sure to only purchase organic extra virgin coconut oil because is hasn't been bleached, deodorized, or refined. This is usually found in health food stores, because it's from the best part of the coconut and has not been chemically and heat processed.

Even the saturated fat from animals isn't as bad as it once was thought to be, especially if it is from organically raised animals (free range and grass fed). Organic butter has a very high conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content, which helps us lose weight and gain muscle. But non-organic meats may still be dangerous because of the way the animals were raised or fed. Most grocery store meats are filled with hormones, pesticides, medicines and unhealthy fat that gets transferred to us when we eat it.

Organically grass fed and free range animals and animal products avoid these problems, and give us a much healthier source of protein and saturated fat. Organic saturated fats and oils are actually good for you and should be eaten daily. The body needs these fats for healthy functioning.

Fry and bake again while enjoying the benefits of coconut oil!