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Adel
Adel currently teaches physics at the University level, but spends a major part of his spare time either working out or doing research on various topics related to exercise and nutrition sciences. In his daily blogposts at the SuppVersity, he tries to tie the knots and bridge existing gaps between conventional wisdom and the latest scientific results on exercise, nutrition, and supplementation.
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Superfood meets Science: Coconut (Part I)

by: Adel Moussa

Many of the health benefits of coconut products have been known for decades. They have been listed in compendia such as J.L. Harwell's Plants Used Against Cancer (Hartwell. 1969) and discussed in hundreds of articles in medical and agricultural journals from all over the world. Nevertheless, oil, pulp and the electrolyte-laden water of the tropical "tree of life" (Adkins. 2005), and this symbol of the Pacific Islands have only recently regained the attention of an autodidact faction within the ever-growing health and fitness community on the Internet; reason enough for us to take a closer look at the long-standing, as well as more recent research on the weight-loss, health, and performance related effects of some of the products that are derived from a fruit, the medical use of which as part of the Ayruvedic medicine has been been documented in Sanskrit as early as 4,000 year agos (DebMandal. 2011).

Coconut Oil - Not all saturated fats are created equal

Losing fat with fat!?! Only a decade ago, the idea that you could decrease your body-fat by eating more, not less, of this calorically dense macronutrient sounded plain-out ridiculous. Over the last years, however, the so called "good fats", a term that usually refers to the essential long-chained polyunsaturated fatty acids linoleic (omega-6) and linolenic (omega-3) acid, have gradually been installed as the saviors of a US society, in which, according to estimates from a recently published four-part series on obesity in the famous medical journal The Lancet (The Lancet. 2011), more than 50% of the population will be pathologically overweight by the year 2030. Saturated fats, on the other hand, are still held responsible for most, if not all, of the ailments the western obesity epidemic brought about. Rightly so? Probably not, as recent, as well as hitherto overlooked (or should we say “ignored?”) scientific research on the diverse health benefits of coconut oil and related products would indicate.



The MCTs in coconut oil are metabolized differently than your "usual" fatty acids

Throughout the '90s, MCT oil was promoted in bodybuilding circles as a superior form of fat, notably by the Parillo camp, who had their athletes ingesting upwards of ten tablespoons per day - although this trend in bodybuilding has become lukewarm lately. And because these fats are readily used as energy and not as metabolized like traditional fats, endurance athletes have cottoned onto the use of coconut oil as a superior fat to be included in their training diet and protein shakes, a trend that has continued steadily for the past few decades. And needless to say, the Paleo-diet crowd has been all over this food as well, and we find it being used as everything from a flavoring in Paleo-friendly shakes, to Thai-influenced Paleo recipes.

Due to its saturated fat content of 92%, coconut oil, prior to the advent of the American edible oil industry in the 1940s, had been highly placed among the major sources of dietary fats in the US (DebMandal. 2011). Despite that fact, it has long passed under the radar of paradigmatically indoctrinated dietitians, of whom only a handful will be aware that the properties of the fatty acids from coconut oil are fundamentally different from those of animal origin.

With a medium chain triglyceride (MCT) content of greater than 50%, coconut oil does not undergo the same degradation and re-esterification processes by which our bodies metabolize long-chain fatty acids. Upon digestion, these coconut fats yield saturated medium chain free fatty acids (MCFAs) and monoglycerides such as lauric acid that can be absorbed intact from the small intestine and thusly constitute a readily available energy source, which has been shown to "potentiate but not initiate" ketosis (Yeh. 1976).


Among bodybuilders and figure athletes on low carbohydrate diets, the use of highly purified lauric acid (MCT) products as a purportedly non-insulinogenic* energy source has become increasingly popular - also because medium chain free fatty acids and monoglycerides from coconut oil cannot be stored in fat tissues.

The latter is yet not the only advantage the tropic oil has from a dieters perspective. In both animal and human studies the immediately metabolized medium chain triglycerides from coconut oil have been shown to increase resting energy expenditure and to trigger a metabolic shift towards increased oxidation of long chain fatty acids (Papamandjaris. 2000; St-Onge. 2003; Nagao. 2010).

*With regard to the "non-insulinogenicity" of MCTs it should  be noted that it studies from the late 1970s showed profound increases in insulin, a subsequent drop in blood glucose and respective increases in growth-hormone (HGH) 30-90 min after the administration of purified MCT oils to healthy children (Valls. 1978)

Contrary to mainstream belief Coconut oil can reduce waist circumference and improve blood lipids

Reduced weight gain and a decrease in the size of fat depots, especially in the abdominal region, are scientifically established benefits coconut oil owes to the aforementioned metabolic effects of its high medium chain triglyceride content. Only a few months ago, Liau et al. published the results of a study in the course of which 20 healthy, but obese (BMI>30kg/m²) Malay volunteers lost a significant amount of abdominal fat (as measured by waste circumference) consequent to the introduction of 2 tablespoons (ca. 30mL) of supplemental virgin coconut oil into their diets.

Due to methodological limitations of the study it is yet difficult to say, whether the reduction in waist circumference was the result of an unconscious reduction in caloric intake in response to the appetite suppressant effects of coconut oil (St-Onge. 2003), or possibly even a direct consequence of increased rates of fatty acid oxidation, as they have been observed in response to MCT feeding in previous studies.





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