Coconut oil: good or bad?

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anb3600
anb3600 Posts: 46 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Should I exclude all saturated fat from my diet? Can you survive without it? I’m vegan and eat mostly raw, so I rarely have saturated fat anyway. Wondering if I should eat coconuts and coconut oil in my diet?

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  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited March 2019
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    Since your diet is already low in sat fat, I wouldn't worry about cutting out the few sources of it you enjoy.

    Pretty balanced piece on it: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/dining/02Appe.html

    Couple more: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/ask-well-is-coconut-oil-a-healthy-fat/

    and https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/coconut-oil

    Basically it's not great to eat a lot of sat fat, so if you did I'd limit coconut oil. But since you don't I'd use it if you enjoy the flavor.

    I like it in some preparations, although olive oil is my go-to oil. Coconut oil is really easy to measure out and I like the coconut smell/flavor.
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
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    A reasonable amount of saturated fat in your diet is fine. If you are not getting it from other sources, then I don't see any problem with getting it from coconut or coconut oil.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,432 Member
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    anb3600 wrote: »
    Should I exclude all saturated fat from my diet? Can you survive without it? I’m vegan and eat mostly raw, so I rarely have saturated fat anyway. Wondering if I should eat coconuts and coconut oil in my diet?

    No one food is "good" or "bad" irrespective of dosage or context, unless it's poisonous in the contemplated serving size.

    An overall way of eating can be more or less healthful, but individual foods need to be evaluated in terms of what nutrients we're nutritionally short or long on (generally, or on a specific day), and what nutrients may have negative/positive effects on our satiation or energy level.

    If I've eaten donuts and Lucky Charms cereal for breakfast, a candy bar for mid-morning snack might be "bad". OTOH, if I had a nutritious protein-rich breakfast with some fats and fruits/veggies, followed by a long bike ride (with more miles yet to ride), a candy bar could be pretty perfect (high calorie, quick-acting carbs, compact and portable). For most of us, a big helping of kale might be just great, but if I have a medical condition that means I should limit vitamin K intake, that same heap of kale would be really bad.

    If you have limited saturated fat in your diet, are getting some good omega-3s in there, have calories available, have already gotten enough protein and some well-rounded micros/fiber, don't have familial hypercholesterolemia, and enjoy coconut oil, it's probably "good". Otherwise, it could be "bad", but it depends on how the rest of your eating and those kinds of factors balance out.
  • Dgil1975
    Dgil1975 Posts: 110 Member
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    Echo what everyone else is saying, all I would add is that if you are eating in a deficit fitting the caloried density of oil into your day could make it harder on yourself.

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