Is Coconut Oil Healthy?

I have been looking into foodstuffs recently in terms of how healthy/unhealthy they are. I've written about black garlic, industrialised bread and how processed food affects our gut bacteria. I don't subscribe to the whole January thing about crash dieting, blimey, it's bleak enough without having to spend these dark nights sitting with a bowl of mung beans or sprouting broccoli for tea, and you can forget dry January, who's bright idea was that?

Dieting gained popularity in the UK in the 1980s and the 'diet industry' has become a very lucrative business, but as I said in my previous post, dieting rarely works because we return to bad eating habits over and over again. We've switched from eating in order to survive to eating in excess and much of what we eat is processed, as the saying goes: 'If it's a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant don't.'

Coconut oil seems to be the latest health fad and is being touted for its ability to help us lose weight, stave off illness and even prevent Alzheimer's but the jury is still out. Research thus far has consisted of short-term studies and nutritionists have said they need a lot more research before they can say it's a super food. As yet, no one knows how coconut oil will affect heart disease.

I'm always wary of foods with 'health halo's,' a generation ago we were decrying coconut oil or any saturated fats, yet we now know that trans fats (still found in a variety of food products) are the worst types of fat we can eat and are hazardous to our health!

We can also run away with the idea that if something is 'healthy' we can eat more of it and lose sight of portion control. We know that olive oil is unsaturated, however, it still needs to be used in moderation, coconut oil is 90 per cent saturated fat, about half of which is lauric acid which does have a number of health promoting properties, however, moderation is definitely the key.

The plus point with coconut oil is that it's a wonderful treatment for dry hair. I recently saw some coconut oil hair products in TK Maxx which were extremely expensive, far cheaper to melt some coconut oil from the pot you've bought for cooking and slather it on!

'The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second biggest is diet books - telling you how not to eat what you've just learnt to cook.'
- Andy Rooney.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx