The Coconut Oil Miracle (3 page)

Using coconut oil for all your cooking needs may be one of the healthiest decisions you could ever make. In this book you will discover many of the health-promoting benefits coconuts and coconut oil can bring to you. You will also learn why many researchers now consider coconut oil to be the healthiest oil on earth. You will discover why many Asian and Polynesian people call the coconut palm the “Tree of Life.”

At this point you may be asking: “If coconut oil is as good as you say it is, why has it had such a bad reputation?” The simple reason is money, politics, and misunderstanding. Everybody knows coconut oil is a saturated fat, and we’re constantly told to reduce our saturated fat intake. The words “saturated fat” have become almost synonymous with “heart disease.” Very few people know the difference between the medium-chain saturated fatty acids in coconut oil and the long-chain saturated fatty acids in meat and other foods. To most people, saturated fat is saturated fat—an evil substance lurking in foods waiting for the opportunity to attack and strike you down with a heart attack. Even medical professionals don’t know there is a difference. Most don’t even know there is more than one type of saturated fat (the different types are discussed in the next chapter). Unfortunately, many health care workers and health and fitness writers only repeat what they hear and have no understanding of fats and how they affect the body. Only recently has the truth about coconut oil been reemerging.

As far back as the 1950s, research began to show the health benefits of coconut oil. For many years it was considered a good oil with many nutritional uses. So how did coconut oil become a despised, artery-clogging villain? Much of the credit goes to the American Soybean Association (ASA). It began in the mid-1980s. At the time, the media were stirred into a frenzy, warning the public about a newly discovered health threat—tropical oils. Coconut oil, they proclaimed, was a saturated fat and would cause heart attacks. Everywhere you turned, any product that contained coconut or palm oil was criticized as being “unhealthful.” In response to the seemingly overwhelming
public response, movie theaters began cooking their popcorn in soybean oil; food makers began switching from the tropical oils they had used for years to soybean oil; restaurants stopped using tropical oils in favor of soybean and other vegetable oils. By the early 1990s, the tropical oils market had dwindled to a fraction of what it once was. The promoters of this media blitz declared a victory in their fight against tropical oils.

This war of oils, unfortunately, made every man, woman, and child in America (and elsewhere) its victim. Tragically, the oil that replaced coconut and palm oils was
hydrogenated
vegetable oil (principally from soybeans)—one of the most health-damaging dietary oils in existence—and the only people who actually benefited from this new health craze were those in the soybean industry. These hydrogenated replacements contain as much saturated fat as the tropical oils, but they are not made from easily digested medium-chain fatty acids like those found in coconut oil—they are composed of toxic trans fatty acids. The result has been to replace healthy tropical oils with some very nasty, chemically altered vegetable oils. We are all victims, because when we eat foods containing these oils our health suffers.

The entire campaign was a carefully orchestrated plan by the ASA to eliminate competition from imported tropical oils. During the 1960s and 1970s, research indicated that some forms of saturated fat increase blood cholesterol. Since elevated cholesterol is recognized as a risk factor in the development of heart disease, saturated fat was, consequently, regarded as an undesirable food component, and we were advised to reduce our intake of it. The prevailing opinion was that the less saturated fat you ate, the better.

Capitalizing on the public’s growing fear of saturated fat and its perceived association with heart disease, the ASA set out to create a health crisis. The crisis they planned would be so terrifying it would literally scare people away from using tropical oils. In 1986 the ASA sent a “Fat Fighter Kit” to soybean farmers encouraging them to write government officials, food companies, and so on, protesting the encroachment of “highly saturated tropical fats like palm and coconut oils.” The wives and families of some 400,000 soybean growers were encouraged to fan out across the country in a lobbying effort touting the health benefits of soybean oil. Well-meaning but misguided health groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) joined in the battle, issuing news releases referring to palm, coconut, and palm kernel oils as “artery-clogging fats.”

The CSPI, a nonprofit consumer activist group, had been criticizing saturated fats since its founding in the 1970s. Like most nutrition advocates at the time, they mistakenly believed that all saturated fats were the same and attacked them with a vengeance. Encouraged by the publicity generated by the ASA, they began to intensify their attack. The tropical oils, being highly saturated, were severely criticized in their promotional literature, news releases, and lobbying efforts. It seemed the CSPI considered saturated fat to be the worst evil ever to beset humankind. The ASA had found a powerful, vocal ally in its campaign to take over the tropical oils market.

For a group that claimed to be an advocate for responsible nutritional education, the CSPI was surprisingly ignorant regarding saturated fats, especially concerning coconut oil. Instead of informing the public about the truth regarding saturated fats, they only succeeded in strengthening misconceptions and falsehoods. The CSPI’s lack of
knowledge concerning lipid biochemistry is revealed in a booklet they published called
Saturated Fat Attack
. While laypeople and many health care professionals may have been fooled by the information in this booklet, nutritional biochemist Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., says, “There were lots of substantive mistakes in the booklet, including errors in the description of the biochemistry of fats and oils and completely erroneous statements about the fat and oil composition of many of the products.” Most people, however, would not have known this, and the booklet and other inaccurate information distributed by the group succeeded in convincing many to completely shun tropical oils. The CSPI’s lack of accurate scientific knowledge made them an unsuspecting puppet for the ASA.

In October 1988, Nebraska millionaire Phil Sokolof, a recovered heart attack patient and founder of the National Heart Savers Association, jumped on the media bandwagon. He began running full-page newspaper advertisements accusing food companies of “poisoning America” by using tropical oils with high levels of saturated fat. Radically anti–saturated fat, he staged a blistering national ad campaign attacking tropical oils as a health danger. One ad showed a coconut “bomb” with a lighted wick and cautioned consumers that their health was threatened by coconut and palm oils. Before long, everybody believed that coconut oil caused heart disease.

Food manufacturers joined in too. Hoping to profit from the anti–tropical oils sentiment, they tried to add labels to their products that read “contains no tropical oil.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled such labels illegal because the statement implied a health claim, which portrayed the product as being better for not having tropical oil, and there was no evidence to back it up.

Meanwhile, tropical oil exporters from Malaysia prepared a public relations campaign against what they called “vicious scare tactics” being used against their product. The tropical oil war was in full swing. At stake was the $3-billion-a-year vegetable oil market in the United States, where the dominant domestic soy oil producers had launched a vicious propaganda war against foreign competitors. The tropical oil industry, having few allies and comparatively little financial muscle to retaliate, couldn’t match the combined efforts of the ASA, the CSPI, and others. Few would listen to the lone voices protesting the dissemination of the false information attacking tropical oils.

When the attack on coconut oil began, those medical and research professionals who were familiar with it wondered why. They knew coconut oil did not contribute to heart disease and that it provided many health advantages. Some even stepped forward to set the record straight. By this time, however, public sentiment had firmly sided with the ASA, and people refused to listen.

Researchers familiar with tropical oils were called on to testify at Senate hearings on the health implications of these products. “Coconut oil has a neutral effect on blood cholesterol, even in situations where coconut oil is the sole source of fat,” reported Dr. George Blackburn, a Harvard Medical School researcher who testified at a congressional hearing about tropical oils held on June 21, 1988. “These [tropical] oils have been consumed as a substantial part of the diet of many groups for thousands of years with absolutely no evidence of any harmful effects to the populations consuming them,”
said Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., an expert on fats and oils and a former research associate at the University of Maryland.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general of the United States, called the tropical oil scare “foolishness.” Commercial interests either trying to divert blame to others or ignorantly following the saturated-fat hysteria were “terrorizing the public about nothing.” Dr. David Klurfeld, chairman of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at Wayne State University, called the anti–tropical oils campaign “public relations mumbo jumbo.” He pointed out that tropical oils amounted to only about 2 percent of the American diet and that even if they were as bad as the ASA claimed, they wouldn’t have much of an effect on health: “The amount of tropical oils in the U.S. diet is so low that there is no reason to worry about it. The countries with the highest palm oil intakes in the world are Costa Rica and Malaysia. Their heart disease rates and serum cholesterol levels are much lower than in Western nations. This [tropical oils scare] never was a real health issue.”

Despite the testimonials of respected medical professionals and lipid researchers, the media paid little attention. The saturated-fat crisis was news, and that got headlines. Major newspapers and television and radio networks picked up the anti–saturated fat ads and developed alarming news stories. One such story was titled “The Oil from Hell.” Those who knew the truth about coconut oil were ignored and even criticized by those brainwashed by the media blitz. Because of the frenzy stirred up by the ASA and their friends, the fictional message they trumpeted won out over scientific fact.

Catering to public sentiment, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s restaurants announced they would replace the saturated fat they had been using with more “healthful” vegetable oils. The switch to the new vegetable oils actually increased the fat content of the fried foods—hardly a healthful move. Tests by the FDA and others found that french fries cooked in beef tallow absorb less fat than those cooked in vegetable oil, which led to estimates that the switch to vegetable oil would more than double the fat content of fries and subsequently increase fat consumption. In addition, the fat was hydrogenated. This kind of fat is worse than beef tallow because it contains toxic trans fatty acids. Trans fatty acids have a greater negative effect on blood cholesterol than beef tallow and therefore are considered to carry a greater risk for heart disease.

The ASA succeeded in producing a health crisis where none had existed. The general ignorance about nutrition by most people swayed them into siding with the soybean industry, which proves that money and politics can override truth. In reality, there was no public outcry; the change was mainly brought about by an aggressive negative campaign. As a result, most major food companies, sensitive to consumer fear, reformulated hundreds of products, replacing tropical oils with hydrogenated oils. Since 1990, the fast food industry has been cooking french fries in hydrogenated vegetable oil instead of beef tallow and tropical oils. They made the change because of the prevailing opinion that vegetable oils were healthier than other oils.

Up until the late 1980s, tropical oils were common ingredients in many of our foods: breads, cookies, crackers, soups, stews, sauces,
candy, and frozen and prepared foods of all sorts. Tropical oils were used extensively by the food industry because they gave foods many desirable properties. These plant-derived saturated fats, being highly stable, do not go rancid, as polyunsaturated oils do. When tropical oils were used, foods remained fresh longer and were better for you.

As a result of the tropical oils war, coconut and palm oils nearly disappeared from our food supply. The consequence is that we now consume far less of the health-promoting fatty acids found in coconut oil and much more of the health-destroying trans fatty acids found in hydrogenated soybean oil. Nearly 80 percent of all the vegetable oil used in the United States today comes from soybeans. Three-fourths of that oil is hydrogenated (containing up to 50 percent trans fatty acids). This amounts to an awful lot of nasty trans fatty acids in our foods now that weren’t there before. For example, a single restaurant meal that contained only 2.4 grams of trans fatty acids in 1982 contains a whopping 19.2 grams today. The food is the same; only the oil is different. Because hydrogenated oils are used everywhere, we are cursed with trans fatty acids just about any time we eat (unless we prepare our food from scratch).

Yes, we lost the war. We lost the many health benefits that can result from regular consumption of coconut products. And we gained too. We gained an increased chance of suffering from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, infectious disease, obesity, and immune dysfunction. These are conditions that have all been tied to the consumption of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Through the cunning marketing strategies of the ASA and the misguided efforts of public interest groups, we have replaced a good health-promoting fat with a very destructive and harmful one.

Even now the embers of this war still burn. Many ill-informed writers and speakers continue to condemn coconut oil as containing “artery-clogging” saturated fat. But who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the soybean industry, which has a huge financial interest at stake, or are you going to believe the research based on Pacific Islanders, who eat a great deal of coconut oil and have far better health than the rest of us, and residents of Sri Lanka, who eat lots of coconut oil but have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the world? Personally, I believe those people who eat coconut oil and don’t have heart disease. In Western countries we eat very little coconut oil but consume a significant amount of hydrogenated vegetable oils. The result? Heart disease is on a rampage. It is our number one killer.