As I looked into the refrigerator my eye caught a large tub of margarine. I liked margarine; I had grown up eating margarine. Margarine on steaming hot baked potatoes. Margarine on hot toast. With the publicity of the dangers of trans-fats my comfortability with this food had taken a real nose dive. Opening the lid, I dipped into the container and came out with a yellow greasy dab on my finger. Now they say, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” And as I fingered the greasy thick spread I was questioning in my mind, it looks like grease, it feels like grease, and it tastes like grease, how then is it not just plain grease? This brought to mind the well stated counsel: “God has furnished man with abundant means for the gratification of an un-perverted appetite. He has spread before him the products of the earth--a bountiful variety of food that is palatable to the taste and nutritious to the system. Of these our benevolent heavenly Father says we may freely eat. Fruits, grains, and vegetables, prepared in a simple way, free from spice and grease of all kinds, make, with milk or cream, the most healthful diet. They impart nourishment to the body and give a power of endurance and a vigor of intellect that are not produced by a stimulating diet.”1

“free from spice and grease of all kinds”1 What, even media/advertisement promoted grease?

The Bible is clear on this topic: “Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat.”2 Today God might say it like this: Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of lard, or margarine, or shortening, or Crisco, or saturated fat, or coconut oil, or trans-fat, or hydrogenated fat.

I looked back at the plastic tub of margarine (grease) in my fridge and resolved then and there to dispose of it promptly. In the bin it went.

But I liked my grease, I missed it, what could I replace it with? To the rescue came a charming product claiming health benefits, “Smart Balance”. And yes, Smart Balance assumed the vacant spot in my refrigerator. Ok, but sticking my finger into this product and pulling some out I again thought to myself, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”... Whose kidding who here? And how did they make this product so thick if it is not hydrogenated and filled with trans or saturated fat? My eyes searched the ingredients, and there it was, coconut oil! A source of saturated fat. In fact, coconut oil has more saturated fat than butter, lard, or beef-based shortenings [Coconut oil (82% saturated fat) vs Butter (63%) vs beef tallow (50%) vs Lard (40%)].3

So, what about coconut oil? Well, if I let the (well informed, always unbiased, ever truthful) popular media be my guide, coconut oil would be my elixir of life. Especially if I had any worries about coming down with Alzheimer’s. But this is not an article on Alzheimer’s, we have an article on Alzheimer’s.4 Even for Alzheimer’s coconut oil is no panacea, as we shall discuss shortly.

Coconut oil may be pressed, heat extracted or separated using a chemical solvent. A thousand mature coconuts weighing approximately 1,440 kilograms (3,170 lb) yield around 70 litres of coconut oil making coconut oil a very refined concentrated food source.5 This puts coconut oil right up there with the other highly refined, processed, unhealthy modern disease fostering foods.

Can we really improve on the diet God gave Adam in the Garden of Eden in his sinless state with processed foods? “By precept and example make it plain that the food which God gave Adam in his sinless state is the best for man’s use as he seeks to regain that sinless state.”6

One time I was staying at someone’s house, doing my own cooking. One day while making healthy waffles my supply of olive oil which I applied to the waffle iron’s surface to prevent the waffles from sticking ran out. The host offered me some of their coconut oil. After breakfast that day I had a very stunning revelation. I felt very mentally dull and lethargic all morning. A little more experimenting proved the coconut oil to be the culprit. Apparently oils that are thick on your plate will be thick in your blood, and make you thick in the head too.

“Fruits, grains, and vegetables, prepared in a simple way, free from spice and grease of all kinds, make, with milk or cream, the most healthful diet. They impart nourishment to the body and give a power of endurance and a vigor of intellect that are not produced by a stimulating diet.”1

Very interesting is the effect of saturated fat on the brain. You'd like the oxygen in your brain to be fairly high, maybe somewhere around 95%. This helps you study better, to be able to do your taxes and pass tests. But do you know what happens when you eat a saturated fat meal, like with coconut oil? Within six hours of eating the oxygen in the brain falls below 70%, what's more it does not return to normal for three whole days! Wow! That's a long time. Will you remember those three whole days? Better not eat a high coconut oil meal within three days of taking a test, you won't perform your best on it. But who only eats one high fat meal a day? The next day another high fat meal is eaten, and you just go back down again to below 70% oxygen on your badly needed brain, and it's going to be yet another three days before your brain returns to normal. What is the moral of the story? Some people have never had a fully functioning brain! Be careful now, don't point any fingers at others, and don’t name any names who you suspect might be thus affected.7 So, let me ask you, does a high saturated fat oil sound like it would be beneficial for an aging brain? Hopefully you have not had a high fat meal recently and the answer to that question will come readily to your mind.

And so, really, less oil is better. Here is a good article. Why No Free Oil?8

And what of the use of Oil in the Bible. The land was not literally flowing with olive oil, it was rather precious and scarce.9 In Bible times you did not just run down to the store and drown your Mediterranean cuisine in lipids. Salad and carbohydrates, like bread, coated with oil do not digest well. Soaked with oil, the carbohydrates from bread become unavailable to digest and the nutrients can become lost. The salad becomes impermeable to water-based stomach acid and digestive enzymes and can rot so that you lose the nutrients. The rotting process can cause toxins to enter your system and make you sick. See our article on fermented foods.

And what of the products they sell in the markets under the label of coconut oil?

I spent some time in the islands. One day my uncle, an islander, got up early and announced, “we’re going to make coconut oil! Today we will go collect coconuts.” So, off we went in the vehicle. My uncle could practically walk up a coconut tree. Up the tree he’d kick off the ripe coconuts and I would run around and pick them up and load them in the vehicle. We’d then cart them to our yard. When the yard was one layer deep in coconuts we proceeded to husk them, crack open the nuts, grind out the coconut meat, and fill a pot with it. We then separated the coconut oil from the pulp and put it into a jar and placed it on a shelf in our well air- conditioned house. Never did the coconut oil go hard. Never did the coconut oil solidify. Never did it turn to a white grease.

When I returned home to Oklahoma from the islands my father was building greenhouses which were to be kept warm (during the winter) with passive solar heat. We headed down to a corn chip factory to obtain their empty steel barrels. The job of cleaning and preparing the barrels fell to my lot. As I scooped and scrapped white sludge out of them, one hot summer day, I became curious as to what I was removing. Looking on a lid I discovered that this waxy/greasy white stuff was none other than coconut oil, that it had 8 ingredients and that it had been hydrogenated. Recalling the corn chip factory and their product line I puzzled about the fact that on their package ingredients labeling they only indicated that their product could contain one of three types of vegetable oil: corn oil, coconut oil or peanut oil. At the time I was a bit frustrated that none of the other 7 ingredients listed on the coconut oil barrel made their way to the corn chip bags ingredient list, and also that the corn chip bag did not describe any of their added oils as having been hydrogenated

A few years later the coconut oil hype burgeoned and every one made a mad dash to the health food store for their share of blocks and jars of hard white coconut grease.

I called my aunt in the islands, “Did any of our home made coconut oil ever turn white and hard like Crisco?”

“No”, she said.

“They’re selling blocks of white organic coconut oil here which never turns to liquid without heating it up.” I then told her of my barrels of white coconut oil from the corn chip factory and she mused with me that, as Sesame Street sings, “One of these things is not like the other”. Recall the council, “free from spice and grease of all kinds”.1 Now, I realize not all coconut oil is hydrogenated, but a lot of it is, and probably more of it is hydrogenated than labels would indicate, and all of it is at a minimum 82% saturated fat with a melting point for this grease above most people’s room temperatures.

Science does not bear out that Alzheimer’s is truly helped by coconut oil.10

What’s more, coconut oil has a negative effect on the immune system and body inflammation much like any other saturated fat, such as lard, beef tallow, butter or shortening. Coconut oil is not great for arthritis, increases the average Joint Pain Index by 27%, as well as increases morning joint stiffness. It increases inflammatory markers such as serum amyloid A, Erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and IgM rheumatoid factor.11 Coconut oil also increases high sensitivity C reactive protein (hs-CRP), an inflammatory marker, by 145%.12 It also increases the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 release.13 All in all, if it is your goal to lower the oxidative stress and inflammation in your body, coconut oil will not be your helper. See our article on autoimmune inflammatory disease.

If you are trying to reduce your blood pressure, thick oils in your blood stream, that reduce oxygen to vital tissues will be of no benefit.14 See our article on hypertension.15

Coconut oil, with all its fat, can send your cholesterol skyward. Coconut oil is associated with significant elevations (as compared to corn oil) of: total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides, all of which are not beneficial to a healthy heart.16,17 see our article on cholesterol.18

The high blood lipids and low blood oxygen produced by consumption of coconut oil also have a detrimental effect on physical performance. People eating coconut oil actually recover more slowly from exercise.19 This can be partly due to the fact that coconut oil decreases cardiac performance and increases the hearts susceptibility to hypoxia.20 So if you don’t care to run as far or as fast as you otherwise would, just lather on the saturated lipids and enjoy. But be mindful, your heart won’t be happy.

Compared to unsaturated fats, coconut oil is more atherogenic. Laboratory animals could tell us that. Protocols for the study of coronary artery disease use coconut oil to create atherogenic plaque.21 Compared with peanut oil, corn oil and even butter oil, the most severe gross atherosclerosis is observed with coconut oil.22 The impact of coconut oil on the physical behavior of cholesterol is remarkable, and not positive. In one study an abnormal stacking of lipoprotein particles in electron micrographs of VLDL, LDL and HDL were observed with coconut oil in the diet.23 For people who experience the misfortune of a heart attack, having been on a diet with coconut oil results in a higher level of myocardial (heart muscle) damage.24

But what shall I spread on my bread or fry my potatoes in? Lard, butter, olive oil, margarine, or coconut oil? What are we advised about olive oil? “When properly prepared, olives, like nuts, supply the place of butter and flesh meats. The oil, as eaten in the olive, is far preferable to animal oil or fat. It serves as a laxative. Its use will be found beneficial to consumptives, and it is healing to an inflamed, irritated stomach.”25 Oil, “as eaten in the olive”, does not suggest to me large quantities of industrially processed free lipids.

But what if I discover that studies of coconut oil have been shown to help a particular disease I would like to treat, like autism?26 You can do the same thing you would do if you discovered that some disease was helped by wheat, choose to use unprocessed whole wheat products not white flour products. So in the case of coconut, you would choose whole coconuts, shredded coconut, coconut milk or coconut cream, etc., any product with the least amount of processing and still possessing the entire product as grown with all its fiber, phytonutrients and vitamins.

Frying foods in oil is not particularly healthy. “We do not think fried potatoes are healthful, for there is more or less grease or butter used in preparing them. Good baked or boiled potatoes served with cream and a sprinkling of salt are the most healthful. The remnants of Irish and sweet potatoes are prepared with a little cream and salt and rebaked, and not fried; they are excellent.”27 Frying creates a large amount of oxidation which is unhealthful.

Parting Words:

Refined foods are the bane of 21st century health. Bottled (visible) oils increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke diabetes and autoimmune disease. Saturated fats, whether from animals or plants, play a large role in health deterioration. The Bible warns against the use of fats. Coconut oil contributes to disease. The hype about coconut oil as a treatment for neurodegenerative disorders has not been found true by science. Coconut oil contributes to the disease burden in the areas of autoimmune inflammatory disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease, and it reduces physical activity performance. My recommendation is to eat unprocessed foods as grown and enjoy the health benefits thereof and help reverse a few diseases.

1 White, E. G. (1938). Counsels on Diet and Foods. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, p. 92.

2 Leviticus 7:23. King James Version of the Holy Bible.

3 https://theconsciouslife.com

4 http://northernlightshealtheducation.com/newsletters/NewsletterSEP_7-2018.html

5 Bourke, RM; Harwood T (2009). Food and Agriculture in Papua New Guinea. Australian National University. p. 327.

6 White, E. G. (1902). Testimonies for the Church, vol. 7. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association. p. 135.

7 Swank RL, Nakamura H. Oxygen availability in brain tissues after lipid meals. Am J Physiol. 1960 Jan;198:217-20.

8 https://www.biri.org/pdf/recipes/Why_No_Free_Oil.pdf

9 White, E. G. (1898). The Desire of Ages. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association. p. 47.

10 DeDea L. Can coconut oil replace caprylidene for Alzheimer disease? JAAPA. 2012 Aug;25(8):19.

11 van der Tempel H, Tulleken JE, Limburg PC, Muskiet FA, van Rijswijk MH. Effects of fish oil supplementation in rheumatoid arthritis. Ann Rheum Dis. 1990 Feb;49(2):76-80.

12 Maki KC, Hasse W, Dicklin MR, Bell M, Buggia MA, Cassens ME, Eren F. Corn Oil Lowers Plasma Cholesterol Compared with Coconut Oil in Adults with Above-Desirable Levels of Cholesterol in a Randomized Crossover Trial. J Nutr. 2018 Oct 1;148(10):1556- 1563.

13 García-Escobar E, Rodríguez-Pacheco F, García-Serrano S, Gómez-Zumaquero JM, Haro-Mora JJ, Soriguer F, Rojo-Martínez G. Nutritional regulation of interleukin-6 release from adipocytes. Int J Obes (Lond). 2010 Aug;34(8):1328-32.

14 Beegom R, Singh RB. Association of higher saturated fat intake with higher risk of hypertension in an urban population of Trivandrum in south India. Int J Cardiol. 1997 Jan 3;58(1):63-70.

15 http://northernlightshealtheducation.com/media_download/High%20Blood%20Pressure-control%20it%20naturally.pdf

16 Fisher EA, Blum CB, Zannis VI, Breslow JL. Independent effects of dietary saturated fat and cholesterol on plasma lipids, lipoproteins, and apolipoprotein E. J Lipid Res. 1983 Aug;24(8):1039-48.

17 Brattsand R. Distribution of cholesterol and triglycerides among lipoprotein fractions in fat-fed rabbits at different levels of serum cholesterol. Atherosclerosis. 1976 Jan-Feb;23(1):97-110.

18 http://northernlightshealtheducation.com/media_download/Cholesterol_Handout.pdf

19 Early RJ, Spielman SP. Muscle respiration in rats is influenced by the type and level of dietary fat. J Nutr. 1995 Jun;125(6):1546-53.

20 Agnisola C, McKenzie DJ, Taylor EW, Bolis CL, Tota B.Cardiac performance in relation to oxygen supply varies with dietary lipid composition in sturgeon. Am J Physiol. 1996 Aug;271(2 Pt 2):R417-25.

21 Wilson TA, Foxall TL, Nicolosi RJ. Doxazosin, an alpha-1 antagonist, prevents further progression of the advanced atherosclerotic lesion in hypercholesterolemic hamsters. Metabolism. 2003 Oct;52(10):1240-5.

22 Kritchevsky D, Tepper SA, Kim HK, Story JA, Vesselinovitch D, Wissler RW. Experimental atherosclerosis in rabbits fed cholesterol- free diets. 5. Comparison of peanut, corn, butter, and coconut oils. Exp Mol Pathol. 1976 Jun;24(3):375-91.

23 Stange E, Agostini B, Paenberg J. Changes in rabbit lipoprotein properties by dietary cholesterol, and saturated and polyunsaturated fats. Atherosclerosis. 1975 Jul-Aug;22(1):125-48.

24 Nageswari K, Banerjee R, Menon VP. Effect of saturated, omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids on myocardial infarction. J Nutr Biochem. 1999 Jun;10(6):338-44.

25 White, E. G. (1905). The Ministry of Healing. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association. p. 298.

26 Lee RWY, Corley MJ, Pang A, Arakaki G, Abbott L, Nishimoto M, Miyamoto R, Lee E, Yamamoto S, Maunakea AK, Lum-Jones A, Wong M. A modified ketogenic gluten-free diet with MCT improves behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder. Physiol Behav. 2018 May 1;188:205-211.

27 White, E. G. (1938). Counsels on Diet and Foods. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, p. 323.