coconut oil/fat burner

[cardy]

Was just reading the metro's newspaper yesterday and there was an article about coconut oil. It was saying something like if its consumed, it doesn't digest in the stomach it. It digests in the liver where it gets turned into a protein, which aids in burning fat. Can anyone shed some light on this ? Or has anyone tried it out?

[Julia Revitt]

Sounds like a typical newspaper headline story! Coconut oil is a saturated fat and as such should be avoided as much as possible. As you probably know excess saturated fat in the diet can cause heart disease & stroke, high cholesterol levels and eventually lead to diabetes.

Julia
Personal & Sports Nutrition Adviser
www.aquilahealth.co.uk

[LewisJ]

Sounds like a typical newspaper headline story! Coconut oil is a saturated fat and as such should be avoided as much as possible. As you probably know excess saturated fat in the diet can cause heart disease & stroke, high cholesterol levels and eventually lead to diabetes.

Julia
Personal & Sports Nutrition Adviser
www.aquilahealth.co.uk

I don't think the answer/ or article has anything to do with saturated vs. unsaturated fats.

I'd guess the article was about medium-chain triglycerides, that are contained in coconut oil. These are emptied from the stomach faster and are absorped differently to longer-chain triglycerides. They are absorped directly into the blood stream, are transported to the liver and combined with albumin (this is probably the protein reffered to).

There is some evidence from rodents that there may be some beneficial effects on obesity and changes in the regulation of certain genes affecting obesity and an increase in energy expenditure, but rats and mice have different fat metabolism to humans so I'm always sceptical as to whether results from rodents translate well to humans.

In humans it's been shown that MCT supplementation can increase fat oxidation and energy expenditure accutely, but doesn't appear to have any long-term effect in terms of increasing fat oxidation or energy expenditure or reducing body body fat. There's also some evidence that medium-chain triglycerides when combined with carbohydrate during exercise can improve performance.