You may have seen this article telling people to avoid coconut oil or worse yet replace it with vegetable or canola oil. You may have seen it online or information about this article on your local news.
It was originally published by USA Today and then scattered across various news outlets and social media outlets over the last couple of days. This article, and the people featured in it, and the people that have been spreading it like wildfire should be ashamed of themselves! It is COMPLETELY FALSE. You can peak at one rendition of the article here and a link to another article here.
Please note the important people that are quoted, specifically the American Heart Association and Frank Sacks who was an author of the study. It’s almost tough to know where to start with this, but here we go.
Firstly, there is NO SUCH STUDY linking coconut oil to heart attacks or heart disease. (That one was easy to address.) No study, none, nada, zip. All they studied is that coconut oil contains high levels of saturated fat (duh!) and that saturated fat increases cholesterol (duh!), but then they go on to say that cholesterol causes heart disease which is FALSE.
Saturated fat is NOT bad for you. It is what is in mama’s breast milk AND eggs. It is required to LIVE and function. It’s worth repeating saturated fat is NOT the bad guy. Did you know that pacific islanders eat HUGE quantities of coconut and yet have very low rates of heart disease? The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study in 2010, 500k people studied regarding saturated fat…conclusion: saturated fat is NOT linked to coronary disease. (1)
Same journal, different study in 2016, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that statistically saturated fat LOWERS cardiac risk. (2)
In 2015 the same journal published a study saying that saturate fat can have some negative outcomes. But guess what, it is only the type of saturated fat that is processed. It only becomes a negative if it comes from “refined carbohydrates in pastries or salt in processed foods” (3) so eating saturated fats from fish, dairy or plants is not an issue.
Well what about the cholesterol? Doesn’t it raise “bad” cholesterol? Well if you buy into the American Heart Associations statement that it causes arterial blockage, I can see where you would be concerned (5). Unfortunately for the AHA, but good for you and I, LDL cholesterol do NOT and has NOT been proven to case heart disease, its all part of keeping people sick and selling more cholesterol lowering medications (but more on that in a minute). Cholesterol is actually an immune response to arterial blockages caused by inflammation. You need cholesterol to be healthy (don’t ever let anyone talk you into taking cholesterol medication — it only decreases your risk of cardiovascular (heart) disease/events from 7% to 6%, by the drug manufacturers own studies).
The proof lies in a combination of causes for heart disease… inflammation, poor diet (processed and refined grains and foods), elevated insulin levels, size of the LDL cholesterol particles, and the gap of LDL vs HDL cholesterol particles. It’s definitely proven its NOT saturated fat, so eat your eggs, butter, coconut oil, grass fed beef and bacon.
So what about the American Heart Association and Dr. Sacks the author of this B.S. “report.” It doesn’t take too much hunting to discover that this gentleman has been on the receiving in of several payments from big pharma companies. Including Pfizer, the makers of Lipitor, the cholesterol lowering drug. No biggie right? Ha, the man has received a LOT of money (6).
The American Heart Association is a lobbyist group—they collect almost 1 billion dollars a year to push the agenda of big pharma and big agriculture including $12,200,000 from Astra Zeneca–also owned by Pfizer (6). The AHA keeps pushing out the SAME TIRED MESSAGE from the 70’s, that saturated fat (found in coconut oil) is the bad guy when it comes to heart disease.
Here’s the thing, coconut oil is FAR more expensive than hydrogenated soybean oil, canola, vegetable oil etc. so you will never see food companies or lobbyist groups pushing for them. In fact you will see them pushing for these unhealthy options because most vegetable oils are made from soy bean and corn, and that is a profitable crop for the government and keeps the patients coming for the big pharma companies. But you should know that veggie oil is toxic, its made from GMO ingredients, heated to the point of oxidation (toxic), processed with a petroleum solvent, treated with chemicals to improve the color, deodorized, and full of trans fats (which really mess up our health) (6).
I could go on and on about this.
Here’s the deal loves, the best thing to do to prevent heart disease is:
- Go organic and eat a plant and healthily raised meat diet with plenty of fats
- Avoid processed foods in packages
- Get plenty of vitamin D (yep sunshine + supplements)
- Sleep 7+ hours in a dark cold room
- Get away from toxins…indoors and outdoors and in your food… bye–bye deodorant, shampoos, soaps trade them for healthy chemical free alternatives
- Meditate, yoga, play otherwise get rid of stress
- Drink good water
- Supplement with good quality useful supplements (no expensive pee)
Sources for your pleasure:
1) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/91/3/535
2) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2016/01/20/ajcn.115.122671
3) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/102/6/1563.long
4) https://www.thedrswolfson.com/coconut-oil-deadly/
5) http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2017/06/15/CIR.0000000000000510