Coconut oil could help the health of overweight women, according to a recent study, as it reduces features of metabolic syndrome such as heart disease, stroke and type two diabetes. The lead investigator of the study, Dr Annie Newell-Fugate, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, said: "Substituting one tablespoon of your saturated fat calories per day with coconut oil could result in an improvement in your cardiometabolic health."
A report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that around 40 per cent of Americans are obese, with one in five suffering from metabolic syndrome. Dr Newell-Fugate added: "Our controlled experimental study suggests that coconut oil may not be bad for cardiometabolic health, contrary to what previous studies have concluded."
The research involved female mini-pigs who were fed a high-fat diet for eight months, consisting of 4,500 calories - to mimic a Western diet that contains 40 per cent or more fat. One group's food included five per cent animal lard.
The other high-fat diet group was given five per cent non-organic coconut oil instead of lard in their food. A third group of pigs consumed a low-calorie, lean diet as a control. The study discovered that the pigs that received coconut oil had lower cholesterol and blood glucose (sugar) levels compared with the pigs that ate a lard-supplemented diet.
The team found that the coconut oil group displayed less signs of fatty liver disease and had reduced abdominal fat compared to the lard-fed group. Dr Newell-Fugate remarked, "Our research suggests that coconut oil may be used with lifestyle modifications and anti-diabetic drugs to treat metabolic syndrome, at least in women with obesity."
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She said that they do not yet know if the results are applicable to men. These findings can be found in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
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