Pure poison. That’s what Harvard professor Dr Karin Michels likened coconut oil to in a lecture with the rather brilliant title Coconut Oil and Other Nutritional Errors, which hit headlines last week and now boasts well over a million views on YouTube. Yes, coconut oil – that “superfood” heralded as the holy grail of health, beauty and wellbeing, has well and truly fallen from grace.
The use of coconut oil for its health benefits and the charged debate around its “superfood” status, is nothing new. Whispers of its wonders within the wellness community – although we were content with the term “healthy eating” at the time – started several years before the full-scale boom of coconut oil evangelism that hit in 2015. Books from Deliciously Ella, Amelia Freer and Madeleine Shaw all launched that year proclaiming the benefits of coconut oil, whilst sales went up 38.8% in the US, according to market research firm Spins. Recipes advocating its use in everything from spaghetti carbonara (don’t tell Italians Mad At Food) to fried chicken were taking over our kitchens, whilst a trend for adding it to coffee was born upon the belief that it could boost your metabolism and immune system. So simple!
Michels’s “poison” comments are based on the high proportion of saturated fat in coconut oil, which is known to raise cholesterol levels and therefore the risk of heart disease. “Pure poison” itself would, presumably, be worse for you, but the myth that a spoonful of coconut oil a day will keep the doctor away seems to have been well and truly debunked. “Because coconut oil increases LDL cholesterol, a cause of CVD, and has no known offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil,” said the American Heart Association last year.
A damning report from the British Nutrition Foundation in 2016 agreed. “If you like the taste of coconut oil it can be included in the diet, but in small amounts and not very often,” it read. “Coconut oil is very high in saturated fat. UK and major international health organizations have concluded that there is a link between high saturated fat intakes, raised blood cholesterol and increased risk of heart disease. This has led organizations around the world to advise that we should be reducing saturated fats in our diet and replacing them with small amounts of unsaturated fats.”
Consider chefs, globally, relieved. In 2017, when I spoke to her about the clean eating movement, Gizzi Erskine perfectly vocalized the reluctance of foodies everywhere to jump on the coconut oil bandwagon. “My biggest pet hate is coconut oil – people are using it in everything nowadays because they’re told it’s the healthiest oil,” she told me. “If I’m cooking Italian, I’m using olive oil. Coconut oil in a bolognese? No. It tastes of coconut!”
But despite coconut oil’s superfood status being challenged by just about every known health organization in the world, it still seemed to have a hold on us. That’s why Michels’s comments went viral – when it’s an actual person in front of you telling you (albeit in German – you can read the translation into English here) that your favorite health food isn’t actually doing you any good and is in fact potentially harming you, it somehow hits home harder than yet another official report might.
Of course the coconut oil obsession extended further than just our kitchens. And so, as with many controversial beauty trends, let’s look to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. The site has extolled the benefits of coconut oil as everything from a body moisturizer to a makeup remover. It also sells an oil-pulling kit with “cold-pressed, alkaline-infused coconut oil” designed to be swilled around the user’s mouth to whiten and cleanse teeth, a practice which Paltrow has spoken about as part of her personal beauty regime. And Goop is not alone – coconut oil has garnered almost as many column inches being recommended as a beauty hero as it has a cooking ingredient.
As a make-up remover? Yes – coconut oil is in fact very adept at removing make-up, as all oils are. I would personally prefer to use an oil-based product designed specifically as an eye makeup remover – cleansing oils, bi-phase eye makeup removers – but I get it: it’s cheap, it’s quick, it smells like a Bounty bar. As a moisturizer, not for me. For those with teeny tiny pores, maybe – I have several friends who swear by it – but for anyone prone to acne? Don’t do it. It’s comedogenic and once that coconut oil settles into your pores, good luck getting it out. There are so many oils better suited to skincare, in my opinion. In terms of a body moisturizer, I’d say that you’d get a lot more efficacy out of a decent body oil than you would a jar of coconut oil – plus the cost wouldn’t be that different when compared to the virgin, cold-pressed, raw coconut oil that boasts the purported benefits.
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This article first appeared on Vogue.co.uk
