Okay, so everyone wants to lose weight. It’s no wonder. Most people sit in front of a screen all day, hit the drive-thru for dinner on the way home and don’t get nearly enough exercise.

But who has time to exercise and eat healthy? You know the foods I’m talking about, the ones that actually require some preparation?

Well never fear, the health nuts are here with your miracle answer!

Today’s nutty topic is using coconut oil as a fat substitute for weight loss. Who would have ever imagined that companies would actual promote coconut oil – which is a saturated fat - to people who want to lose weight. This is priceless. Are we that desperate?

But there’s more! They’re even telling people it helps you lose weight because it’s “metabolized like a carbohydrate and not a fat.” Huh?!

It never ceases to amaze me how far these slick marketers will go and how naïve and gullible some people can be. I would imagine that if the marketing it good enough, you could tell people that they could lose weight by drinking motor oil and a few of them would try it.

So, in spite of all the hype out there about coconut oil, IT IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU!

Coconut oil is over 90% saturated fat - the bad fat that leads to heart disease, strokes and cancer. All it really contains is lauric acid and it’s not even an essential fatty acid. Actually, it’s mainly used in soaps and cleansers.

Also don’t buy the hype that saturated fats are falsely maligned. They will kill you. Besides, there is no difficulty getting saturated fats in our diet and absolutely NO reason why you would need to supplement with it.

Yes, primitive cultures drank coconut milk, ate both fresh and dried coconut and sometimes made a fermented mash out of it. BUT they did NOT press the oils and take them in a concentrated form. That is a modern adaptation that has no basis in human health and nutrition.

That said, saturated fat is also the sort of fat that you’d want to avoid if you’re trying to lose weight. You have only so many calories you can consume daily and if you’re filling them with saturated fats from coconut oil then you’re not going to have room for foods that contain all the nutrients your body needs for good health.

And it’s heinous how they’re misleading people into thinking that coconut oil metabolizes like a carbohydrate. I have a secret for you. A fat is a fat and your body digests it as a fat everytime. (Psst! Your body digests carbohydrates like carbohydrates too.)

Here’s one more reason to stay away from coconut oil. A study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (vol. 15, 1791-1798) showed that a high consumption of saturated fats increased the risk of colorectal cancer by 700%.

This means stay away from saturated fats and especially don’t believe the hype about coconut oil, which is 97% saturated. It’s a killer!