I received an email a couple of days ago. It was related to a newsletter I had been subscribing to from RealAge.
For a long time, I thought cocunut oil was all saturated fat and not good for your heart – particuarly since I live in India and cocunut oil is the preferred cooking oil here and there is some criticsim regarding that in Asia.
But, I was surprised to hear that this new product, referred to as "extra virgin" (as opposed to "virgin" and non-"virgin" i supoose – cocunut oil, that is packaged within 24-48 hrs supposedly does wonders for your health.
It was touted as having healing properties for your skin as it is an excellent moisturizer, and it was said to be healthier for the heart than olive oil.
I had thought olive oil was the best for cooking because it was most expensive. Cocunut trees are in plenty along the southern cost of India, but olive trees are not.
Olive oil may be good for salads, but cocunut – the extra virgin kind, of course – gets its prominence from its chemical properties during cooking. Its chemical components presumable have anti-free radical and anti- aging elements.
And research has found that contrary to popular belief, it is not the saturated fats found in cocunut oil that causes a problem for your heart, but the unsaturated king that does.
Recently, there was a big stink about restaurants in New York like KFC, and burger joints using trans fats. It turns out that trans fats are generated when using cooking oil that contains unsaturated fats – like olive oil.
As the "trans-fat" scare, much like the lead paint-toy scare, was hashed out in the media in large proportions, big fast food chains are now looking at alternative oils like soybean and perhaps even flax seed?
There was also a point that cocunut oil has the correct proportion of omega fats, i.e. fat no.6 and fat no.3. I didn’t know that omega fats had been classified as such, but omega fats are also good for the heart, and is commonly found in fish like sardine.
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