Sorry, Nigella, but the benefits of coconut oil are a big fat lie

NIgeLLA tells us, in her trademark, breathless style, that her latest chocolate cake is so mouthwatering it ‘confounds’ and ‘delights’ in equal measure. The price for ‘such depth and fudginess’, adds the Domestic goddess coyly in her new cookbook, is that ‘the shopping list (of ingredients) is a tiny bit demanding’.

Demanding, it turns out, not only for your purse, but also the health of your heart.

Nigella recommends her legions of followers use 75g of trendy coconut oil for best results — an ingredient that contains 87g of saturated fat per 100g.

That means this dollop of the fat most clearly linked to high cholesterol and heart disease contains more than three times a woman’s 20g recommended daily allowance.

Indeed, flick to her new Christmas cake recipe in simply Nigella, and the dose is upped to 175g — nearly eight days’ allowance of saturated fat, albeit split into 14 slices.

so how did a product more calorie-heavy than butter, six times the price and containing more heart-clogging fat, become one of the most celebrated fads of recent years?

removed from foods in the eighties because it was deemed too unhealthy, coconut oil has had a remarkable image overhaul thanks in part to Nigella, who has adopted it as the fashionable vegan alternative to butter, and model Miranda Kerr, who starts her day with it in green tea.

Indeed, the coconut oil bandwagon has rolled on so far that it’s also said to suppress appetite, speed metabolism, improve digestion, clean teeth, re-grow hair, moisturise skin — and help with such serious conditions as Alzheimer’s, Aids and autism.

As such stories have exploded over the internet, so have sales. Coconut oil — made from the dried white ‘meat’ of the nut grown in countries like the Philippines — is now one of the most popular grocery items on Amazon, while sainsbury’s sales soared 400 per cent last year.

Nor it is just the oil. It seems we have also gone nuts about everything that contains coconut — from coconut milk to water and even flour. But although it is hailed as the latest superfood, some salient points seem to have been forgotten.

Top of these is the fact that coconut oil is still on the list of fats the NHs advises us to cut back on for the sake of cardiac health, along with ‘butter, hard cheese, fatty meat, biscuits, cakes, cream, lard and suet’.

Furthermore, the British Heart Foundation also says on its website that while there has been ‘speculation that some of the saturated fat present in coconut oil may be better for us than other saturated fats, so far there is not enough good- quality research to provide us with a definitive answer’.

Charity Heart UK goes one step further by advising people who want to lower their blood cholesterol ‘to avoid using coconut oil in cooking and certainly not use it as a dietary supplement’.

Open a jar and it has the translucent appearance of lard. White and gelatinous, it quickly turns liquid at room temperature.

In fact, it’s ‘lardier’ than lard. Coconut oil has three times the amount of saturated fat. It also has a third more saturated fat than butter, which has 52g per 100g and six times more saturated fat than olive oil, which has as little as 14g.

AsFOr calories? Butter contains 717 per 100g and coconut oil 145 more. so how did it suddenly become a supposed health food? After all, following a scare 30 years ago, it was removed from many products amid fears it could trigger heart attacks.

However, since studies in the late Nineties, a debate has raged around whether the molecules of fat found in it are shorter than those in other edible oils — and therefore less harmful.

Fat is made of molecules arranged in chains of carbon of different lengths. They include short-chain fatty acids, medium chain fatty acids and long chain fatty acids.

Claims that coconut oil contains healthy saturated fats are based on findings that the medium and short-chained fatty acids in coconut oil are more easily broken down than long-chain fatty acids, which are believed to be stored in the body and help form fatty deposits such as cholesterol in the arteries.

However, a growing number of health charities and experts say there is not yet enough evidence to declare it safer for cardiac health. Nutritionist Bill shrapnel was among the first to question whether coconut milk was healthy — or just hype. He is equally sceptical about the oil. Indeed, he believes the fatty chains in coconut oil are probably no safer than those in animal-based saturated fats, such as butter.

Bill says: ‘They are similarly bad for heart health. It is much better to use an unsaturated fat, like olive oil.’

However, relentless marketing has allowed such claims to bypass the usual checks, adds Bill, author of The Pro-Active Plan: The Ultimate Cholesterol-Lowering diet. ‘The arguments about the supposed health benefits of coconut oil have all been distributed via social media.

‘ We never hear this sort of thing from professors at nutrition conferences because the claims aren’t supported by science. They aren’t true.’

For dietitian Helen Bond, of the British Dietetic Association, the claim that the oil speeds the metabolism is especially ironic.

‘People forget it’s an oil and has calories in it,’ she says.

‘so if you add a tablespoon to your smoothie every day, you are adding 135 calories to your diet. If you remember that 3,500 calories is a pound of fat, in 25 days you will have put on a pound if you don’t compensate for those extra calories.

‘People have become very attached to this idea of coconut as a wonder product and tend to get upset when cold water is poured on the idea. But you have to be mindful of the calories you are taking in. If you put on weight, that is also damaging to your heart health.’

Dr Duane Mellor, assistant professor in dietetics at the university of Nottingham and spokesman for the British Dietetic Association, puts it more bluntly.

‘Coconut oil is not magical. There are no unicorns in the jar. It has got this nice natural plant image, but it’s still high in saturated fat.

‘It’s been claimed that this oil is predominantly a medium-chain triglyceride, which might carry benefits for weight loss. But that claim has not been shown in human studies.

‘The studies that are out there are too small to justify the health claims. It’s marketing based on a mish-mash of the research.

‘Coconut oil has no clear winning advantage above other oils and it’s got some disadvantages too — cost being one. It’s also going to rack up thousands of food miles as you transport it.’ However nutritionist Christine Bailey, author of the Paleo Healing Bible, out in January which advocates using coconut oil, says the evidence is still in its favour. ‘Coconut - eating cultures in the tropics have consistently lower cholesterol than people in the U.s, according to studies,’ she says, adding that coconut is also healthier than many other oils because it has a higher smoke point, the temperature at which it begins to smoke and produce toxic fumes and harmful free radicals.

For coconut oil this is 180c — 20 degrees higher than olive oil. ‘This makes it safer because you will not consume damaged fats.’

But Dr Mellor says: ‘ Look at the packaging of coconut oil and ask yourself why these claims are not plastered all over them.

There is a reason manufacturers can’t legally make them and it’s because they are not proven.’

But with Nigella recommending coconut oil and Miranda Kerr having it for breakfast, so far there’s been no need.