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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today I've got another classic episode

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Speaker 1: from our archives. In this one, we looked at the

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Speaker 1: phenomenon of coconut oil as a dietary trend. In a

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Speaker 1: pretty brief span of time. It was labeled healthy, a

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Speaker 1: paragon of foods, and then unhealthy, a gastronomical evil. But

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Speaker 1: nutrition is always more complicated than that, Hey brain stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbomb Here. Just a couple of short years ago,

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Speaker 1: it seems that coconut oil could do no wrong. Practically

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Speaker 1: out of nowhere, it was being touted incessantly as a superfood,

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Speaker 1: thanks to claims that it helps burn fat and curbs hunger,

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Speaker 1: among other impressive feats. Just recently, however, a Harvard professor

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Speaker 1: fired the metaphorical shot heard round the world by saying

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Speaker 1: that coconut oil is and I quote, pure poison. This

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Speaker 1: came not too long after the release of updated guidelines

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Speaker 1: by the American Heart Association, which urged people to steer

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Speaker 1: clear of saturated fatty acids, among them coconut oil. The

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Speaker 1: leap from superfood to pure poison is pretty big. Like

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Speaker 1: Grand canyon big. So where does the truth lie. Not surprisingly,

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Speaker 1: it's somewhere in the middle and could even change again

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Speaker 1: once more research is done. We spoke by email with

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Speaker 1: Melissa Majumdar, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy

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Speaker 1: of Nutrition and Dietetics. She points out that despite popular

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Speaker 1: and prevalent claims to the contrary, currently there is insufficient

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Speaker 1: evidence to rate the effectiveness of coconut oil in helping

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Speaker 1: with issues like diabetes, weight loss, chrome's disease, irritable bale syndrome,

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Speaker 1: and thyroid problems. She explained, many of the health claims

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Speaker 1: have been blown out of proportion and are not yet validated.

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Speaker 1: At the end of the day, coconut oil may have

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Speaker 1: some beneficial properties that were still exploring, but it's still

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Speaker 1: a fat and should still fit onto our plate in moderation.

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Speaker 1: Much of the confusion lies in our scientific understanding of

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Speaker 1: how coconut oil operate. A tablespoon of coconut oil has

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Speaker 1: the same number of calories as other oils like olive

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Speaker 1: and canola, that is about one hundred and twenty. However,

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Speaker 1: it also has thirteen grams of saturated fat, which is

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Speaker 1: sixty three percent of the recommended daily dietary allowance of

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Speaker 1: saturated fat in just a tablespoon. That was why people

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Speaker 1: watching their cholesterol were advised to stay away from it

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Speaker 1: in the past. In the last decade or so, some

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Speaker 1: people began reclassifying coconut oil as healthy. Here's why. The

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Speaker 1: proponents said that coconut oil has medium chain triclysrides or mctas,

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Speaker 1: unlike most other oils which have long chain triclysrides. Let's

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Speaker 1: break that down. Medium and short chain triclysrides are more

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Speaker 1: quickly absorbed and sent into circulation in the body than

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Speaker 1: long chain triclysrides. A two thousand three study had shown

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Speaker 1: that mcts can speed up your metabolism, which helps you

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Speaker 1: lose weight, while another study showed that mcts prevent hardening

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Speaker 1: of the arteries, which lowers risk of heart attack and stroke. However,

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Speaker 1: these studies were done with oils that were pure mcts

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Speaker 1: and not with coconut oil, which is only partially composed

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Speaker 1: of mcts. According to Mudjumdar, there's controversy over whether coconut

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Speaker 1: oil behaves like a medium or long chain triglyceride. This

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Speaker 1: distinction could be something of a moot point. However, since

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Speaker 1: the body doesn't process coconut oil the way it would

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Speaker 1: other oils containing mcts, Mudumdar said, what we do know

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Speaker 1: is coconut oil is majority composed of a fatty acid

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Speaker 1: called lauric acid, which contributes to both elevated HDL the

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Speaker 1: good cholesterol, and elevated LDL, the bad cholesterol, and is

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Speaker 1: therefore not a great idea for anyone battling high cholesterol

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Speaker 1: or the family history of heart disease. Most folks should

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Speaker 1: be aiming to get twenty five to thirty five percent

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Speaker 1: of their total calories every day from fat. Majumdar, like

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Speaker 1: most nutritionists, urges people to limit their daily saturated fats

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Speaker 1: to seven to ten percent of that. Not surprisingly, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't take much coconut oil to hit that marker. Majumdar

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Speaker 1: notes coconut oil is more like butter calorie and fat

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Speaker 1: wise than other oil. As a rule of thumb, the

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Speaker 1: healthy fats are the ones that are liquid at room temperature,

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Speaker 1: not solid. Instead of using coconut oil, looked fats like

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Speaker 1: canola or olive oil. A tablespoon of conola oil has

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Speaker 1: one gram of saturated fat. That's five percent of your

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Speaker 1: recommended dietary allowance, while a tablespoon of olive oil has

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Speaker 1: two grams, that's nine percent if you recommended dietary allowance.

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Speaker 1: As to whether Majumdar agrees with the Harvard professor who

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Speaker 1: vilified coconut oil, she said, I can't think of a

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Speaker 1: food I would call poison. There's no food I'd want

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Speaker 1: people to be afraid of, but I wouldn't put coconut

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Speaker 1: oil in the healthy corner. We will say though, that

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Speaker 1: while it may not be a health food, coconut oil

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Speaker 1: is great for moisturizing your skin and soothing wounds and irritations.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how Coconut oil

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Speaker 1: Went from superfood to Pure Poison on HowStuffWorks dot com,

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Speaker 1: written by A. Leo Hoyt. Brainstuff is production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership withhoustuffworks dot Com and is produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,

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