Niki Bezzant: Fat lot of good in coconut oil

Marketed as a good fat, where does it actually sit compared to olive oil and butter? Photo / Getty Images

It's become almost ubiquitous now in the realms of what we consider health food. Coconut oil. It's a healthy oil, right? In fact, all things coconut. Half the foods in the health food aisle seem to contain coconut in some form: oil, sugar, nectar, flour, milk. It's a coco-flavoured world.

Each time I write something about coconut – especially the oil - I do a check. Has there been any new research into coconut oil? Is there some new evidence I need to know about? This time, as per usual, the answer has been "not really". Coconut oil still looks like a triumph of marketing over science, and our penchant for all things coconut seems to be driven by trend, not health.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that cooking everything in coconut oil is a healthy choice. The coconut oil marketers would have us believe it's a superfood, capable of inducing everything from weight loss to fighting Alzheimer's.

The reality is a little less exciting. But let's start with the good things about coconut.

The flesh of the coconut is a high-fibre food; so coconut threads and dessicated coconut can add useful fibre to foods. Coconut flour is the same; it's 40 per cent fibre so using it to boost the fibre in baking can be a good thing.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that cooking everything in coconut oil is a healthy choice. Photo / Getty Images

However, coconut is high in saturated fat, and this is where the issue arises with all coconut foods. Coconut oil is 92 per cent saturated fat.

Despite what you may have heard, saturated fat is not a health food.

The research is evolving on this; it's clear there are different types of saturated fat, and different types do different things, and some types may not be as harmful as other types. It also appears the types of foods the fat is in may have an impact. But that's not a licence to load up on butter (or coconut oil). There's still compelling evidence that replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat is a good thing for heart health. And it's still true that replacing saturated fat with refined carbs is not a good thing.

The saturated fat in coconut is of a particular type, and this is where confusion seems to arise around its health benefits.

Much of the hyperbolic claims about coconut and coconut fat are about what are known as medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs). However, oil experts have determined that coconut oil only contains a very small amount of medium-chain fatty acids. The main fatty acid is lauric acid, which – although often described as a medium-chain fatty acid, acts like a long-chain fatty acid in the body.

So far, so technical. What it boils down to is that much of the research being used to promote coconut oil, especially, is actually about MCT oil, which is quite a different beast in reality from coconut oil. There hasn't been a great deal of research specifically into coconut oil in humans, and what there has been has produced patchy results; some has shown coconut oil to be worse than olive oil but not as bad as butter for heart health.

Another small study conducted last year for a BBC TV show found coconut oil didn't raise LDL cholesterol but did raise HDL cholesterol (a good result) showing similar effects to olive oil. But even these researchers acknowledged this wasn't enough evidence to alter official advice to lower saturated fat intakes. The jury seems to be well and truly still out here.

The other bit of myth-making favoured by coconut product marketers is that people whose diets traditionally include coconut fat are super-healthy. That has been the case for Pacific populations whose traditional diets have included loads of whole, natural foods, tons of fruit and veges and fish. These populations ate no processed foods and had a hugely active lifestyle. What's more, they didn't eat much coconut oil; the coconut in the diet was from coconut flesh and coconut milk and cream, not gobs of coconut oil the way we're encouraged to eat it in our Western diets. Coconut oil was traditionally used on the hair and skin.

If we like coconut foods, then, we should take a leaf from that book, and use them in moderation (there's that word again) in the context of a great diet full of whole unprocessed foods. Veer towards the whole coconut products – ie the flesh and water – rather than the processed products such as oil. And take care with coconut ice cream and yoghurt. While these are delicious, and dairy-free, so useful for people with allergies and intolerances, they're also hugely calorific due to their high fat content and, often, sugar in various forms (including coconut sugar). And as with other dairy replacements, you're unlikely to get the calcium and protein you'd get from dairy yoghurt or icecream. So best to treat these coconutty goodies as treats.

* Niki Bezzant is a food and nutrition writer and speaker, and editor-at-large for Healthy Food Guide. Follow Niki @nikibezzant