Does This Saturated Oil Cut Your Heart Disease Risk?

While we usually try to only publish reports about academic studies, conducted by respected institutions, instead of jumping on the latest health fads, the BBC did run an interesting study recently that is noteworthy.

The producers of the program called Trust Me I’m a Doctor contacted professors Kay-Tee Khaw and Nita Forouhi from Cambridge University to conduct a study for them on the effects of an oil which is very high in saturated fat, and which many doctors would strongly advise you against consuming.

But the results were stunning as subjects consuming this “unhealthy” fat improved their good cholesterol level three times more than those eating olive oil.

In the past, many health researchers were convinced that because coconut oil is a saturated fat, it was heart unhealthy for the same reason as butter, cream, and red meat fat.

Researchers recruited 94 subjects between the age of 50 and 75 with no history of heart disease and asked them to consume one of three different fats throughout four weeks.

The first group had to eat 50 grams of extra virgin coconut oil (three tablespoons) per day, the second group was told to eat 50 grams of extra virgin olive oil per day, and the third group had to eat three tablespoons of unsalted butter per day. The rest of their diets could stay the same as before.

Their cholesterol levels were tested before they started with their new fat regime and at the end of the four weeks.

What did they find?

1. The LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) of the butter eaters increased by 10% while their HDL cholesterol (or good cholesterol) rose by 5%.

2. The olive oil eaters experienced a small but insignificant drop in their LDL cholesterol and a 5% rise in their HDL cholesterol.

3. The coconut oil group’s LDL remained the same, while their HDL rose by 15%.

This seems to suggest that coconut oil is even healthier for your cholesterol profile than olive oil, even though the former is considered an unhealthy saturated fat while the latter is meant to be the big heart healthy star of the Mediterranean diet.

The researchers did warn that the group of participants was small and that the study was too short to draw strong conclusions, but we can at least conclude that there seems no strong reason to refrain from eating coconut oil.

But if you really want to get your cholesterol under control, you need to cut out this one ingredient that you didn’t even know you were consuming…