What is a new day except a fresh opportunity to discover new uses for coconut oil? From beauty aid to bathtub scrub, oil of coconut will make you prettier, thinner, softer, suppler, and a better lover on account of how it will do all those others things. Soon, it will unlock the mystery of all diseases and the world will shine.
For instance, Lauren Conrad uses coconut oil. Her recent blog post on the wonders of coconut oil is typical of the fawning language and cult-like devotion this once-vilified oil now enjoys:
Years ago, if someone were to tell me that there was one single product that solved dozens of health and beauty woes, I most likely wouldn’t have believed them. One product that you can use to cook, moisturize your hair, remove your makeup, and hydrate your skin? Not possible, I would have thought. However, this little miracle does exist. And, unlike many fancy beauty and cooking products out there, it is free of chemicals and 100 percent natural. This wonder is none other than coconut oil.
I use coconut oil every day on my skin, my hair, and even in the kitchen. In fact, most of the time when a friend comes to me asking for a quick fix for a beauty or skin problem, my answer is “just put some coconut oil on it.”
It wasn’t always this way. Coconut oil was not always the most popular oil in the oilfield. According to a piece in the New York Times from 2011 that picked up on the presence of the stuff in health food stores again, the story goes a little something like this:
The last time I checked, coconut oil was supposed to be the devil himself in liquid form, with more poisonous artery-clogging, cholesterol-raising, heart-attack-causing saturated fat than butter, lard or beef tallow.
Its bad reputation caused a panic at the concession stands back in 1994, when the Center for Science in the Public Interest put out a study claiming that a large movie-theater popcorn, hold the butter, delivered as much saturated fat as six Big Macs. “Theater popcorn ought to be the Snow White of snack foods, but it’s been turned into Godzilla by being popped in highly saturated coconut oil,” Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the center, a consumer group that focuses on food and nutrition, said at the time.
Turns out, all those hate studies were done on partially hydrogenated coconut oil, according to nutrition sciences professor Thomas Brenna at Cornell. Partially hydrogenated oil not only obliterates the good stuff in coconut oil — antioxidants, fatty acids — it also creates trans fats.
Said Brenna:
“Virgin coconut oil, which has not been chemically treated, is a different thing in terms of a health risk perspective. And maybe it isn’t so bad for you after all.”
This is how many nutritionists and scientists talk about coconut oil — it has some good stuff going on, and, hey, turns out, maybe it isn’t so bad for you, but research is limited. Saturated fats are not what they were thought to be either, meaning there are some benefits to them, but they should still not comprise more than 6% of your total daily intake, according to the American Heart Association, which says that if you eat 2,000 calories a day, only 120 of those should come from saturated fat. (One tablespoon of coconut oil is 117 calories.)
Regardless, you should know that there is only one rule of coconut oil use: Don’t ask the universe what else coconut CAN do, ask if there is anything left coconut oil cannot do. Based on the last few months of coverage by coconut oil advocates, that answer is nothing. This tropical delight apparently has many magical, surprising, genius, beautifying, amazing, previously unknown-to-you uses (including possible treatments for HIV, hair damage, lice, and Alzheimer’s). Why buy a $30 serum to minimize fine lines when you can grab an $11 jar of the good stuff and also put it on your popcorn?
Use it to:
Cook
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