Coconut oil and your opinion re fat loss?

Well, coconut oil is used for cooking, or just eating! It's quite tasty! But calorific. Many supplements add MCTs as a form of energy, but owing to it's low yield to creating an insulin spike a lot of fitness athletes use it as they want to keep their insulin levels in check (insulin is a fat storing hormone, though also an anabolic hormone - which makes it a love/hate relationship when it comes to nutrition, and being able to get your levels in an optimum state for muscle growth/recovery whilst minimising fatty deposits!)

IT can also trigger a thermogenic reaction (the process in which your body burns fat for energy) which is also ideal for people wanting to use fat as fuel rather than rely on carbs. It's also good at lowering blood/sugar and as such creates a more insulin sensitive state for your body which is a good thing.

It can help kick off a ketogenic process in your body. Furthermore, it can help increase HDL cholesterol (as usual, with the caveat of a good balanced diet! :p).

A lot of this has nothing to do with cooking though!

Coconut oil doesn't oxidise easily and you can cook at high temperature with it. :)
 
Freefaller said:
Well, coconut oil is used for cooking, or just eating! It's quite tasty! But calorific. Many supplements add MCTs as a form of energy, but owing to it's low yield to creating an insulin spike a lot of fitness athletes use it as they want to keep their insulin levels in check (insulin is a fat storing hormone, though also an anabolic hormone - which makes it a love/hate relationship when it comes to nutrition, and being able to get your levels in an optimum state for muscle growth/recovery whilst minimising fatty deposits!)

IT can also trigger a thermogenic reaction (the process in which your body burns fat for energy) which is also ideal for people wanting to use fat as fuel rather than rely on carbs. It's also good at lowering blood/sugar and as such creates a more insulin sensitive state for your body which is a good thing.

It can help kick off a ketogenic process in your body. Furthermore, it can help increase HDL cholesterol (as usual, with the caveat of a good balanced diet! :p).

A lot of this has nothing to do with cooking though!

Coconut oil doesn't oxidise easily and you can cook at high temperature with it. :)
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Interesting stuff. I already knew the last bit at least :p I have considered moving to coconut oil previously for the high temperature and general 'healthy' associations (not to mention the flavour).

I quite like combining tasty cooking with stuff that can be healthy so it's very interesting to me anyhow :)

Glaucus said:
It soothed nappy rash.

Was meant to be dietary which I've already posted the only ones I can find on humans.
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Yeah, I worked out what you meant. Apologies for the gentle mocking :p
 
Some links here to studies comparing MCTs to LCTs, some conclusions seem to suggest that MCTs could be of benefit to those wishing to lose weight.
 
It's not overly strong in taste, and if you're going to fry something, it won't lose it's health benefits so you don't have to worry about the fat too much - and it doesn't taste greasy IMO. It does flavour the food, so you just have to get used to that a little - but i find it really pleasant. I haven't cooked with it for ages since I don't know if SWMBO will like it - so I usually just have a pot that I dig into as a snack :o
 
Glaucus said:
Surprisingly I found for more clinical trials on coconut oil as hair and skin conditioner than for diapered purposes.

Clinical trials show it helps hear and reduces breakages which means the strands of hair are thicker all the way along.
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Didn't know there was that much clinical proof for that. I used to/sometimes use it mainly because of mom telling me to :p Though that's probably partly influenced somewhat by stupid number of adverts for the stuff when I lived in India.
 
Have just purchased that product from amazon, looks perfect to me. will report back my personal findings...I wonder if eating hard oil will act like a laxative? hmmmm
 
rotters said:
Have just purchased that product from amazon, looks perfect to me. will report back my personal findings...I wonder if eating hard oil will act like a laxative? hmmmm
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When I first started on coconut oil I got a pretty strong reaction in that area for a while, worried me at first but apparently coconut oil is high in lauric acid which converts in the body to monolaurin. Monolaurin is claimed to have strong antibacterial, antifungal, anitiviral properties, IMO the reaction I experienced was due to the monolaurin doing its job and clearing out unwanted bacteria etc.

Best thing to do IMO to avoid/minimize any reaction is to start on just a teaspoon a day and gradually work your way up from there, no reason why you can't eventually take several tbsp's a day if you decide you like it, I take anywhere between 3-5 tbsp these days and never have any adverse reaction.

Always best IMO to be cautious when introducing something new into your diet, VCO is potent stuff in my experience so best advice I can give is to start slow and work your way up.
 
What kind of flavour does it give to food?

Would it be a viable alternative to butter for veg and medium heat frying (like breakfast fryups)?
 
maccapacca said:
WTF is that price get yourselves to a 'ethnic' supermarket and get the same for a few quid.

Also great for Pancakes
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I regularly shop at various supermarkets around China town and Rusholme here and I've not seen any virgin coconut oil for as cheap as you're suggesting.
 
krooton said:
What kind of flavour does it give to food?

Would it be a viable alternative to butter for veg and medium heat frying (like breakfast fryups)?
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It's really minor, I don't really notice it, but some people do. You know when you fry stuff and people use too much oil and you get that oily taste? Well you don't get that, but the oil you do eat doesn't taste "oily" it just seems less "fat". It's hard to explain :o

Great alternative to butter - but I still like using butter - you can use butter and CCNO together.

maccapacca said:
WTF is that price get yourselves to a 'ethnic' supermarket and get the same for a few quid.

Also great for Pancakes
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800+ml for a few quid for good quality virgin coconut oil that's been unbleached and unhydrogenated? Damn! None of the local stores around here do it :(
 
smit101 said:
When I first started on coconut oil I got a pretty strong reaction in that area for a while, worried me at first but apparently coconut oil is high in lauric acid which converts in the body to monolaurin. Monolaurin is claimed to have strong antibacterial, antifungal, anitiviral properties, IMO the reaction I experienced was due to the monolaurin doing its job and clearing out unwanted bacteria etc.

Best thing to do IMO to avoid/minimize any reaction is to start on just a teaspoon a day and gradually work your way up from there, no reason why you can't eventually take several tbsp's a day if you decide you like it, I take anywhere between 3-5 tbsp these days and never have any adverse reaction.

Always best IMO to be cautious when introducing something new into your diet, VCO is potent stuff in my experience so best advice I can give is to start slow and work your way up.
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If people decide they want to swap to using this stuff to cook with for whatever reason then fine. It's got a decently high smoke point so it's probably quite versatile in the kitchen.

Advocating that some "take" up to 5 tablespoons of fat a day is incredibly bad advice. Putting aside all of the special chemicals and whatever effect they may have, this stuff is basically fat, and it's common sense that you shouldn't be shoveling 5 tablespoons of pure fat in your gob for the hell of it. At circa 120 calories per tbsp, your 3-5 tbsp is weighing in at 360 to 600 calories a day. It should be very obvious that this is not a good idea.

And for the record: the idea that this stuff is somehow beneficial because it's cleaning your digestive system out is nonsense. Your body neither needs nor wants some magical potion cleansing out the commensal bacteria of your digestive tract, since it's pretty important. The reason that your stool motion was altered when you started necking tablespoons of this stuff is because your body was not using to coping with great big dollops of pure fat being added to your normal diet.
 
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