The scary thing you never knew about coconut oil

pulse

June 19, 2017 8:51 PM

You're going to want to throw out the coconut oil after you read this.

coconuts

The American Heart Association has released a new report advising people against the use of coconut oil.

The Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease advisory conducted seven controlled trials where they compared coconut oil with monounsaturated or polyunsaturated oils.

The report, released on June 15, showed that coconut oil increased LDL, or “bad” cholesterol in all seven of their controlled trials and in six of them, the increase was considered significant.

One finding that really puts this into perspective was that there was no difference when it came to comparing coconut oil with oils saturated in fat such as butter and beef fat.

In fact, coconut oil is actually so high in saturated fat (82% of the fat in it is saturated) that it far outweighs pork lard (39%), butter (63%) and beef fat (50%).

The Center for Disease Control reports that nearly 32% of Americans have high LDL cholesterol and for those people, the AHA recommends consuming no more than 6% saturated fat as part of their daily caloric intake.

Naturally with these findings, their latest warning to prevent high cholesterol is against coconut oil.

"Because coconut oil increases LDL cholesterol, a cause of CVD [cardiovascular disease], and has no known offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil," the American Heart Association said in the Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease advisory.

Coconut oil has been considered a healthy alternative recently — so this finding will drastically change it's perception.

The study mentions a recent public survey of Americans, reporting that 72% of them believe coconut oil is considered healthy.

They compared those findings with nutritionists, of which only 37% believed that to be true.

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