Coconut oil - who is right?

“one of the worst things you can eat, that was as good for wellbeing as 'pure poison'." Karin Michels - Harvard University

“Coconut oil is the little black dress of wellbeing – everyone should have some!” Holland and Barrett

I took this photograph in my local Coles the other day. At least I'm pretty sure it's Coles but I guess it could be Woolworths. Not that it matters as I'm sure that both have a similar range. Here there are four or five different sorts of the solid kind of coconut oil and a couple of liquid ones. I took the photo because I think I was looking for some olive oil at the time and I have been meaning to tackle the subject for a long time.

As you can see from my above comments I think/thought that there are just two different kinds of coconut oil, but no, it seems there are many, as shown on the diagram at left. How they are all made is described in a very full way by one Brian Shilhavy, an 'expert' on the benefits of coconut oil, which status he derived from having lived in the Phillipines, where it is commonly used, for many years. His article is published on one of the many sites dedicated to coconut oil - Coconutoil.com.

I won't go into detail about how coconut oil is made, but if you are interested Brian Shilhavy's article is very detailed and also very clear. The main difference seems to be whether it is made from the pure coconut or copra which is the coconut dried through a variety of processes and which is inedible in its raw form.

A quick aside here. When I was a young teenager - around 14/15 I think, we went with my father on one of his shorter voyages to 'the continent' - to Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. The main cargo on the ship was copra, for at the time he worked on cargo ships which also carried a very few passengers. On this occasion we were the passengers. The copra was loose - in the hold. They loaded in huge kind of nets. This was well before the days of containers. And the copra was infested with copra bugs - which were a kind of beetle that flew. And they flew everywhere. You kept finding them all over the ship. When they unloaded the copra from the hold there was a fairly dense cloud of them which doubtless drifted into the three ports, although somehow I think that the bulk of it was unloaded in Antwerp. I wonder what became of them?

But back to the refining or otherwise of coconut oil. Basically the more refined it is, according to this article, the less beneficial it is. Of course. Pure is good. And I mean that in a good way. His main argument is that the more you refine it the more you remove the lauric acid (also found in breast milk) which I think, from my skimming of all the research, is the most beneficial of the ingredients in coconut oil - according to those in favour that is. So buy the virgin solid oil if you must have it at all. It's purer. Curiously though Shilhavy did not think that organic gave any extra meaning to coconut because coconuts are rarely treated with pesticides - they grow too high on the tree. So where do those copra bugs come from?

"Since the 1970s, the message from public health bodies has been that they raise bad cholesterol, fur up arteries and increase the risk of strokes, heart disease and heart attacks. That’s the view of the UK government, the World Health Organisation and virtually every other public health body in the world." David Derbyshire - The Guardian

“Coconut oil is about 86% saturated fat, about one-third more saturated fat than butter,” British Heart Foundation

And indeed it does seem to be the case that science regards it as bad. Virtually all of the reputable sites that I visited endorsed this view, although they did grudgingly say here and there that if you just had a little bit now and then - like all bad for you things - then it was OK.

“For the time being, if you like the taste of coconut oil, then, as with butter, it’s fine to use it every now and then. However, it’s best to restrict yourself to small amounts and use unsaturated oils as an everyday choice instead.” British Heart Foundation

They also grudgingly say that for some of the claims, the jury is still out. Not enough evidence, and certainly not enough to warrant getting stuck into it in a big way.

“There has been speculation that some of the saturated fat present in coconut oil may be better for us than other saturated fats, but so far there is not enough good-quality research to provide us with a definitive answer." British Heart Foundation

And yet all those wellness freaks out there, the Paleo diet people, the vegans, the celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie endorse it wholeheartedly. As does, rather more dangerously I think, Michael Mosley. In one of his Trust Me I'm a Doctor episodes he tested 94 people with coconut oil, virgin olive oil and unsalted butter to see the effect on their good and bad cholesterol and found that coconut oil was the best at increasing the good cholesterol whilst having no effect on the bad. Michael Mosley, I'm sure, has an enormous effect in England on what people think. He's very appealing, asks interesting questions and some of the content is very informative. But I am always a tiny bit wary of his so-called 'experiments' because they are so small and of such short duration. This was yet another very preliminary, and small study and, yes, it did surprise the people at Cambridge University who were running it, but really it was not sufficient to say go for coconut oil. It might be sufficient to set up a larger study but then again maybe not. But I bet it raised the sales of coconut oil - the Michael Mosley effect - like the Delia effect.

"While three quarters of the US public considered coconut oil to be healthy, the review noted that only 37% of nutritionists agreed. " American Heart Foundation

I also had a look at recipes on sites such as Taste, BBC Food and Allrecipes and it seemed to me that the majority of the recipes were for sweet things - cakes, slices, biscuits, health bars, that were also probably loaded with sugar and carbs in the form of some kind of flour, not to mention nuts. It is also obviously loved by vegans though I'm not quite sure why they couldn't equally love all of the better cooking oils. They're all plant derived after all. Maybe the fact that the recipes were mostly sweet is from the fact that coconut oil must taste of coconut which wouldn't necessarily go with more savoury things - although, of course, there were also a few Asian curries in the mix.

Coconut oil is supposed to cure just about everything there is from haemorrhoids to Alzheimers as well as heart disease and stroke - which is what the scientists think it will actually cause. And you can use it on your skin too. A lady (it has to be a lady surely) with the amazing name of Happiness Nieweoha recommends it as a face wash, body scrub, body oil, makeup remover and insect repellent. And it's often used in sun cream isn't it? if you want to smell like coconut that is.

If you don't like coconut - like my husband - then it's not going to be for you. If you believe in all those superfood, health food things then I doubt that anything any scientist is going to say is going to change your mind. If you're an in betweener like me then a little bit now and then won't do any harm I guess.

"a sweet smelling, greasy fat used for frying, baking, spreading on toast, adding to coffee or simply rubbing into your skin." David Derbyshire - The Guardian

But there's even more than that to coconut. It's not just a story of oil - more about those things another time.