According to a lecture given by a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, coconut oil is ‘pure poison’.
The statement was made by Dr. Karin Michels in her 50-minute talk at the University of Freiburg in Germany last month.
She told the audience that ‘coconut oil is pure poison’, among other things, and according to her, it is one of the worst foods you can eat.
The video was viewed more than 400,000 times since, and it only adds fuel to the already fiery debate over the oil’s nutritional values. Many people think that coconuts contain only guilt-free fat, but the American Heart Association has urged consumers to restrict its use.
Coconut oil’s popularity has been on the rise in the last few years, but cardiologist suggests that even though it is tasty and sumptuous, those velvety qualities are no friend to your arteries.
According to Dr. Michels, it’s even worse than lard, the pig abdomen fat.
Yet, a survey conducted in 2016 found that 70% of the Americans believe that coconut oil is healthy, and most of them see it as the healthiest oil out there.
The ascend in sales of coconut oil began in the 2000s, after two studies by Columbia University showed that coconut oil contains medium-chain fatty acids, who apparently burned fat quicker than the controls.
Many people thought, and still, think that this product is the Holy Grail of fat burning, but the medical industry thinks otherwise. Even the author of the studies, nutrition professor Marie-Pierre St-Onge explained that coconuts are only 14% medium chain fatty acids.