Health & Nutrition

by Irene Dzioba

Good fats are an essential part of a healthy diet. A very clear explanation regarding the use of good and bad fats in the diet is presented in the book Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Dr. Mary Enig, an international expert on the biochemistry of food and fat, and Sally Fallon, the president of The Weston A. Price Foundation. The book cites historical evidence that current notions regarding the replacing of naturally saturated fats with vegetable oils and hydrogenated trans-fats for health reasons are misplaced. They state, "During the 1950's, Dr. Dudley White, the most famous cardiologist of his day (he was President Eisenhower's physician), noted that heart disease had increased as the consumption of liquid vegetable oils increased and the consumption of eggs and traditional fats like butter and lard declined. The use of margarine quadrupled, and that of vegetable oil more than tripled, between 1900 and 1950, while egg consumption declined by half."

They go on to explain that in order to promote the lipid hypothesis which claims that naturally saturated fat is bad for the body, those experts point to studies in which artificially fully hydrogenated coconut oil was used for testing its effects on heart disease. Instead of placing blame where blame was due, as we are now admitting in the 21st century, that it is hydrogenated fats which are detrimental to one's health, they blamed the coconut oil. Artificially fully hydrogenated coconut oil will raise cholesterol levels because when the oil is hydrogenated, it eliminates all the essential fatty acids in the oil. The authors state, "So it's the lack of essential fatty acids that created the health risk, not the coconut itself."

In other words, it is hydrogenated fats which contribute to heart disease and not coconut oil. Coconut oil contains medium-chain fatty acids and has important qualities which contribute to one's health by boosting immunity, including lauric acid which is found in mother's milk.