So far, no research has shown that coconut oil can help fight disease in humans or animals. There are indeed many studies on the metabolic effects of medium chain triglycerides, but that has nothing to do with coconut oil. Besides, is there anything else?

Maybe one or two more. There is a little bit of research on coconut oil, but most of it has been done on its main fatty acid component, lauric acid. Justifying coconut oil’s status as a miraculous superfood on the basis of those research results is a bit of an overstatement. But I guess since the so-called “magic superfood status” is just a fabricated marketing gimmick, it doesn’t matter if there is evidence.

Among the main arguments for coconut oil is the health and vitality shown by Indigenous peoples around the world who consume large amounts of it. Naturally, these people attributed all the vitality of the Aboriginal people to the magic oil they ingested. Arguments about the legendary health of Polynesian Aboriginal peoples, especially their heart health on a relatively high-fat diet, have often come up in the coconut oil debate.

There have been some population studies done in the past, but nothing can be drawn to support coconut oil’s arguments. It’s true that some groups of Polynesian natives who eat a lot of coconuts have really low rates of heart disease, but I hope the reader can see the correlation and causation, and also notice that there are several confounding factors Existing, especially the population groups in the study tended to also have high intakes of fruits and vegetables and fatty fish. In addition, it is very important that none of these people ingested so-called “coconut oil” because coconut oil is a modern processed product. They may have eaten a lot of coconut meat, and some even made coconut milk from it, but never extracted coconut oil from it. Although eating this way also ingests fat, ingesting it in the form of whole foods is very likely to change the way food is metabolized. Eating sunflower seeds and drinking a large can of sunflower oil are two different things after all.

Polynesians are not the only people in the world whose staple food is coconut. In the case of Sri Lankans, the average intake of coconut is higher, but the rate of cardiovascular disease is abnormally high. This of course doesn’t prove that coconut has or doesn’t have magical properties, it just means that the way science works is never just taking certain evidence to confirm what you already believe.

Other evidence for the dietary benefits of coconut oil is sparse and inconclusive. Many people claim that it raises good cholesterol (good cholesterol is HDL, for those who haven’t checked it before), although most studies show that it also raises bad cholesterol (LDL)- — that is, an increase in overall cholesterol — a risk factor for heart disease. Most of the evidence shows that coconut oil is less effective at raising cholesterol than cream, but worse than olives and sunflower.

There is a study on ethnic Malays that is often cited as evidence that coconut oil can help reduce waist circumference, but it was only a small study, the study was only 20 people, and the effect was only obvious in the male group, as for the study Other factors to be measured, including total body weight, showed no effect. Taken literally, this doesn’t sound like a strong endorsement of coconut oil’s benefits at all.