Coconut Oil

Coconut Conundrum
Q Are foods made with coconut oil bad for me?

A If you feel guilty every time you indulge in a tasty Thai curry, you can put your mind at ease. Coconut oil, which is the fat in coconut milk, has gotten a bad rap for its high saturated fat content. Lately, though, it’s been making a nutritional comeback.

While the fat it contains is mostly saturated, recent research suggests it’s not as likely to raise cholesterol as was previously thought. (Earlier studies were mainly done on the partially hydrogenated form of the oil, which causes trouble for arteries because of the trans fatty acids it contains.) One type of fatty acid it contains, lauric acid, is one of the immunoprotective substances in mother’s milk.

Lauric acid is also metabolized more quickly than other saturated fats, which means it spends less time hanging around in the bloodstream. “It’s used by the body for energy right away, instead of being stored as fat,” says Thomas Rogers, a naturopathic physician in Seattle who counsels patients on nutrition.

What’s more, pure coconut oil is lower in calories than most other oils, containing only 6.8 per gram rather than 9, says Fran McCullough, author of The Good Fat Cookbook.

Those calories can still add up to a lot of saturated fat, though, and as nutritionists like to remind us, we should keep consumption to a minimum. So it’s best to go easy, limiting saturated fat to no more than 10 percent of your total daily calories. (A typical Thai curry will put you over that limit, but for most people, indulging now and again is okay.)