I'm getting pretty addicted to coconut oil..But im kinda scared it will make me fat! i think i gain pounds when i started taking some... But ive read that it is immediatly consumed by the liver, and that it does not turn into fat... Is that all true??

No, it isn't true. If your intakes exceed your expenditures, the balance will be stored as fat. This is true for all foods, even the so-called zero calorie foods (which are not, really) such as celery.

arugula, i'm just curious, because my own experience when i first went raw was that i was consuming WAY more calories per day then my pre-raw diet (seriously, i ate 6 avocados one day...) but i dropped weight at an amazing rate. i totally understand and have always believed the calories in - calories burned = balance stored as fat equation, but my personal experience no longer jibes with this. can you help me make sense of this?

Yes. There is reduced metabolizable energy in a high fiber diet. If you get 30 g of fiber per day you might *use* only 90% of your intake, the rest will be excreted. If you get 60 g of fiber per day, it might be only 80%. And so on. And this would also be affected by a sudden change in your diet from low to higher fiber. It takes a little time for your GI tract to adjust to such changes.

This is why I can consume by paper 1800 kcal/day and not gain, when the calcs suggest that I should be closer to 1550.

Avocadoes are not high in fiber but the other foods you were eating were and that would reduce uptake. Also you can google the Atwater correction (or conversion) factors, the old approximation of 4 calories per gram for protein and carbohydrate, 9 for fat does not hold true for all foods. For unrefined plant foods, it's less the 4 for p and c, less than 9 for f. For animal foods, it's a bit more than 4, 4, and 9. For refined plant foods, 4, 4, and 9 is about right. These are only approximations. If you wanted the truth, you would not only have to use a bomb calorimiter with exact replicas of everything you put in your mouth, but you would also have to have your feces weighed and analyzed. I know of one person who actually went through all this rigamarole to have confirmed what I wrote above. Too much fiber = fewer usable calories than what you expect.

here is a link with some data you might find interesting
[www.nutribase.com]

Also there was a recent paper in AJCN but it isn't free until it's a year old.
[www.ajcn.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2008 01:55AM by arugula.

thank you arugula, that makes sense to me.

> If you wanted the truth, you would
> not only have to use a bomb calorimiter with exact
> replicas of everything you put in your mouth, but
> you would also have to have your feces weighed
> and analyzed.

let's hope it doesn't come to that. for the time being i am completely satisfied with the quasi-truth.

I hear ya on the hunger and not gaining weight. I feel like I'm ravenous even though I'm eating more calories. Sometimes I have cooked grains just to try to not be hungry anymore. I'm thinking of doing a juice fast to shrink my stomach and mind into eating less because 3,500/day can't last forever!

Utopian Life

OMG! 3 500 calories per day?? Thats alot!

aragula

thanks for the info... I did not know that calories could be different...this is interesting

Sadly, the numbers seem to hold true to me and I am gaining weight, overeating when I'm experiencing cabin fever (March apparently isn't spring yet in the north)--though maybe I would have gained much more were I not eating raw vegan. I guess that's the bright side of things. How else could I eat all day and take a month to gain five pounds?! Not on SAD.

mira,

It may be that coconut oil does not turn into fat as do polyunsaturated fats. Most modern research says coconut oil increases the LDL cholesterol levels in the blood. This means a person eating coconut oil all the time will be more susceptible to heart disease and atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Here is a picture of an aorta with atherosclerosis:


The coconut oil vendors all say that raw coconut oil does not raise the LDL cholesterol levels. I don't know if this is true or not. But if I were to eat a lot of coconut oil, I would have my serum cholesterol levels checked regularly.

Yes, 3,500 calories, but I don't want to keep it that way, though it is fun. It's just too expensive and time-consuming and kind of annoying to be hungry all the time. I don't think I've gained any weight.

[utopiankitchen.wordpress.com]

Utopian Life

Well... im kinda jealous!! lucky you!, i guess you have a naturally fast metabolism.

Bryan

Well... When i started hearing about coconut oil and its benefits, i was verrrry skeptical. I remember, i was completly outraged when i saw how much saturated fat there was in there!!
And then, i started being interested in Raw Foods, and i kept asearching for articles about a raw living style, and what was my surprise... I kept seeing articles about coconut oil, very positive in general!
So i king of changed my mind, after all, there is now more positive press than bad press...
But as you say, i think i will be checking my cholesterol levels carefully, just to be sure...

The fact is that out of all oils, even lard, coconut oil has the most saturated fat, as does palm oil. Just because something is natural doesn't always mean its good for you. Bryan's picture is a direct result from too much saturated fat, raw or not raw.

corizza Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bryan's picture is a direct result from too much saturated
> fat, raw or not raw.

is that true? i'm not disagreeing, i'm just wondering if the studies have ever been done on raw saturated fats in general, and coconut oil in particular?

i haven't read dr. doug's book yet, but i did go back and read my ornish stuff, and all the studies quoted and all the things i have found online about high fat vs. low fat diets do not differentiate between raw v. cooked fats, and i just wonder if it truly is the same.

I can't believe that dedicated and educated raw fooders are anti-coconut oil, the soy and canola oil company's misinformation campaign is so effective that it reaches even here, or to raw authors that we trust. The only thing bad about it, is that it IS an oil and not a whole food, but I get so frustrated with always getting bad coconuts, and I think buying coconut oil is so much more reliable.

i thought that picture was a drippy, melty slice of pizza. either way -- GROSS!

coco
hahahah !! thats what i tought too!! it really looks like melted cheese...GROSS!


Well... opinions are very different about weither its good or not...
It supposed to be a powerfull antiviral... It helped people who have HIV in reducing their viral loads!

It isn't too different from melted cheese. Cheese is mostly saturated fat.

I have effectively made a cooked vegan cheese soy-free that got melty. So don't diss all cheese, jsut the omni crap! :p

I've got one simple observation about comparing cheese to coconut fat.

If you cook cheese too much, or even leave it out on the counter open for awhile it gets very hard.

Now coconut fat can get hard too but only when it is cold, not at body temperature, not when cooked and not when left out open. You would have to be dead and have a lot of coconut fat in your system before the coconut fat would get hard.

This is because they are different types of fats even if they are both "saturated fats". Coconut fat is a medium-chain fat and cheese is a long-chain fat, that means that they are different.

Saying that coconut oil is a saturated fat, and must be bad because it is a saturated fat, is like lumping cucumber and tomatoes in with sweet fruits because they are all fruits, and then saying that you're going to get a sugar high from gazpacho.

Actually I think I would have made a better point that we should be comparing cheese v coconut flakes and coconut oil v butter since they are more similar substances, with similar melting points and drying properties.

Ok, so to compare coconut oil and butter, here is a breakdown of their saturated fats:
Saturated fat profile of common foods (percentage of total fat)
[en.wikipedia.org]

Food:....Lauric acid....Myristic acid....Palmitic acid...Stearic acid
Coconut oil..47%............18%..............9%................3%
Butter..........3%..............11%.............29%...............13%

So coconut oil is mostly lauric acid with regards to it's saturated fat content.
I've seen coconut oil sellers claim that coconut oil will bind with cholestol and remove it from the body, I went in search of a source other than the coconut oil sellers and I think I found a patent for something called,US Patent 7078437 - Apolipoprotein D degradation inhibitor, which backs this up.

How this works is that there is apolipoprotein D created by the body which binds with cholesterol. Apolipoprotein D can be degraded by proteases, and the patented invention, of which lauric acid and oleic acid are "the active ingredients" protects the body's apolipoprotein D from being degraded. So in an indirect way it lowers cholesterol.

Snippits from the patent link which back this up:
[www.patentstorm.us]

apolipoprotein D gene is expressed in various tissues, with high levels expression in the adrenal gland, pancreas, kidneys, placenta, spleen, lungs, ovaries, testes, brain, peripheral nerves, and cerebrospinal fluid. Apolipoprotein D is also found in apocrine axillary secretions. Furthermore, apolipoprotein D was identified as the major component of the mammary cyst fluid from women with breast gross cystic disease.

Apolipoprotein D is degraded by proteases present in the living body or proteases produced by Brevibacterium epiderumidis, a resident skin flora. . . .

Both lauric acid and oleic acid--active ingredients of the apolipoprotein D degradation inhibitor of the present invention--are fatty acids which are found in almost all species of living organisms . . .

Apolipoprotein D can bind various molecules such as cholesterol, steroid hormone, bilirubin, and arachidonic acid, depending on the conditions or the tissue (e.g., nerves) or organ. While neither its role nor its physiological ligand has been
clearly identified, it is suggested that apolipoprotein D participates in maintenance and repair within the nervous system as a transporter of such molecules.

Oops, I made a mistake in the above analysis when I said that the apolipoprotein D binds with cholesterol and moves it out of the body.

Apolipoprotein D is a 29-kDa glycoprotein which is primarily associated with the high density lipoproteins (HDL) in human plasma.

So apolipoprotein D is associated with the good cholesterol, so there is another step to the elimination of the bad cholesterol: what apolipoprotein D does is it binds HDL the good cholesterol and then the HDL moves the LDL bad cholesterol out of the body.

[cat.inist.fr]
Lauric acid greatly increased total cholesterol, but much of its effect was on HDL cholesterol. Consequently, oils rich in lauric acid decreased the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol.

[www.medicalnewstoday.com]
When it comes to cholesterol, most of us worry about too much of the "bad" kind, low-density lipoprotein (LDL). It causes plaque to build up in and potentially block the arteries that supply your heart with blood.

But don't overlook the "good" cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL). It helps remove excess cholesterol from arteries and eliminates it from your blood.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2008 11:04PM by Lillianswan.

A sign of a really healthy food to eat is how many days can you live on eating only that food, without eating or drinking anything else. For me, I could live indefinitely on only watermelon. However, I don't think I could last very long eating only coconut oil. There are too many missing nutrients in coconut oil.

In fact, other that fat, what else is there in coconut oil? Are there vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber, water? Not really, in fact, coconut is a pretty empty source of calories when it comes to nutrients other than fat.

I wouldn't eat coconut oil but I eat the whole coconut. I actually don't eat the mature coconuts at all and stick to the young ones. usually only one a day or every other day. I'll be getting my check-up soon. I wonder what the results will be.

Lillianswan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> [cat.inist.fr] > Lauric acid greatly increased total cholesterol,
> but much of its effect was on HDL cholesterol.
> Consequently, oils rich in lauric acid decreased
> the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol.

.. this link concludes: "The effects of carbohydrates and of lauric acid-rich fats on CAD risk remain uncertain."

Another overview of saturated fat studies concludes: "Because of the paucity of scientific understanding of the role of specific fatty acids in humans beyond the effects on total and LDL cholesterol, research on the effects of specific fatty acids in a broader health context should be viewed as a clear research priority. [www.ajcn.org]

Coconut oil has benefitted from a great marketing campaign.. I don't believe all the claims but don't dismiss it entirely either.. still I prefer the whole food.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2008 12:09PM by loeve.

Ohmygod... that artery picture should be hung up in every pizza parlor in America!

I read this thread because I'm in Cambodia (now, Thailand a couple of days ago...) and I'm drinking a lot of coconut water and a little bit of the coconut flesh now and then.

I'm going to buy a watermelon right now.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Lee, on the road...

If you're eating young coconuts in Asia, they will be fine for you. Young coconuts are a whole food versus the refined and processed nature of coconut oil. Also, there isn't much fat in a young coconut (well, if the flesh is jelly like).

He he he, eat a lot of coconut oil, coconut meat, coconut milk and you will always be slim.
Fat doesn't make people fat.
Starchy carbs are the ones that make people fat.
Rice, potatoes, wheat, corn, etc.

Anything you want....

Everything in moderation....

- just my 2 cents

Thanks Bryan! I have eaten soooo many young coconuts since I got here. At first it was just to get a cool, pure liquid into me. I have been perspiring like crazy and a lot of the vendors keep a selection of young, green coconuts on ice. They just crack 'em open and stick a straw in and for less than a dollar... YUM!!! Sometimes though, I'll take a spoon out of my daypack and eat the flesh. The more gelatinous, the better.

I did end up buying a watermelon though. I love watermelon so I don't usually need much inspiration to run out and do that.

I love this food!

Lee