Health Sciences Institute: Coconut oil is ‘pure poison?’ That’s just crazy!

Like a bad penny that keeps turning up, the attack on coconut oil is making a return engagement… and this time, we’re being told that one of the healthiest oils you can find is actually “pure poison.”

That dramatic statement comes from Karin Michels, whose killer resume includes such notable institutions as both Columbia University and Cambridge University in addition to her current position as an adjunct professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

But that armful of degrees doesn’t seem to have made her any smarter when it comes to this healthful oil.

According to “Doctor” Michels, it contains high levels of saturated fat that can clog our arteries.

Good grief! It’s like entering the Twilight Zone and being transported back to the early 1960s, when all saturated fats got slammed and the real artery-clogging culprits — trans fats – received a mistaken clean bill of health.

Now, thank goodness, we appear to know better – but it looks like this Harvard “expert” is trying to take us back into the dark ages of nutrition.

Although it may be a relative newcomer to the U.S., coconut oil has been a staple in tropical locales for thousands of years. In fact, a study published back in 1981 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that inhabitants of two Pacific Islands whose diets were largely coconut-based and high in saturated fat had relatively little vascular disease.

The closest we can get to mirroring their diet is eating the virgin coconut oil you can now find on most supermarket shelves.

Where your brain is concerned, a joint study from the University of Copenhagen and the National Institutes of Health found that a diet high in healthy fat — precisely the kind found in coconut oil — can “postpone the aging of the brain.”

This delicious oil is also known to up your levels of HDL, or “good” cholesterol, and contain high amounts of lauric acid, a medium-chain fatty acid that has anti-viral and anti-fungal properties and can prevent bone loss.

Actually, it’s amazing that Big Pharma hasn’t jumped in and made coconut oil into some obscenely priced drug by now!

It’s also an exceptional oil to cook with, as it has a high smoke point, meaning that it’s perfect to use in a hot pan sauté of just about any food.

As for choosing between coconut and olive oils, it doesn’t have to be one or the other! Both should be staples in your kitchen.

But whichever oil you cook with, make sure it’s NOT a soy, corn, or canola variety. No matter what you hear about these oils (especially canola) being heart-healthy choices, remember that 99.9 percent of that trio of food crops is genetically modified.

And that meets the true definition of a “pure poison!”

To Going Coconuts,

Melissa Young