If your social media feed is filled with food and recipes, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered someone cooking with coconut oil. Often used as a fat in baked goods or as a substitute for butter in cooking, many social media users promote coconut oil as a healthier alternative to seed oils (which have been inaccurately labeled as ‘poisonous‘) or animal fats. Some even claim that eating straight coconut oil every day can help you lose weight.
But if you look at the nutritional content of coconut oil, you might get confused about its reputation as a health food. Coconut oil is high in saturated fat, and eating a diet high in saturated fat which can raise your LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke.
