Coconut oil is ‘as bad for you as beef dripping and butter’ heart experts warn
TRENDY coconut oil is just as bad for your heart as beef dripping and butter, US experts say.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA) coconut oil is packed full of saturated fats and raises your risk of "bad" cholesterol just as much as other saturated fats.
The finding is part of a new AHA advisory paper on replacing saturated fats to lower the risk of heart disease.
Coconut oil is commonly sold as a healthy alternative but Dr Frank Sacks, lead author of the advisory paper, says that claim is simply not pushed by scientists.
According to the paper, coconut oil is 82 per cent saturated fat compared to canola oil which is just seven per cent saturated fat.
The same paper also advises replacing saturated fats such as butter, lard, beef dripping and palm oil with healthier oils such as soybean oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil and walnuts.
Saturated fats raise the risk of LDL cholesterol, or "bad" cholesterol.
High levels of bad cholesterol can increase the risk of atherosclerosis (clogging of the arteries), heart attack, stroke and other heart diseases.
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Scientists at the AHA found that simply replacing saturated fat with healthier fat lowers a person's risk of heart disease by about 30 per cent - similar to taking cholesterol-lowering statins.
But they stressed those already taking prescribed stains should continue their course of treatment along side making healthier changes to their diet.
Dr Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "That statin is only going to go part of the way,” he said. “You’re going to mess up the effect of the statin if you’re eating all unhealthy foods."
He said one reason people may struggle to reduce their saturated fat intake was the familiarity of foods made with it.
He said: "People also have a strong emotional connection to what they eat.
"What you’re brought up eating, what people call their comfort food — there’s a lot of emotion in that.
"But nutrition science may not support the health of that kind of eating."
Sacks and his team of researchers looked at research papers published since the 1950s and found evidence to suggest saturated fats should only make up 10 per cent of our diets.
Overall fat intake was higher when early studies of saturated fats were done in the 1950s and 1960s.
The studies showed that reducing saturated fats lowered cholesterol, reduced the risk of heart attack and stroke, and in some cases lowered the risk of death from coronary heart disease.
But although people are eating less saturated fat than 50 years ago, they still eat too much according to Sacks.
He added: "If you have a cheeseburger or bacon burger, you get saturated fat from almost everything except the bread.
But despite his stark warning about the risks of saturated fat, he is not against deep frying.
He said: "There’s nothing wrong with deep frying as long as you deep fry in a nice unsaturated vegetable oil."
In the UK, Public Health England recommends the average man eat no more than 30 grams of saturated fats a day and women should eat no more than 20 grams.
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