Any actual sources for that, so we can all, as intelligent adults, have a look into it ourselves?
It's absolutely no secret that coconut oil is the most saturated rich food that we know, but the trials that were involved in trying to prove that coconut oil was linked to clogging of the arteries was a series of tests using
isolated fats and rabbits. Isolated being the key word here, and rabbits are herbivores.
Anyway, I digress. I'm going to post some more snippets from various websites that champion the use of coconut oil and its healing properties, and I'll finish off with an article I just read which paints a much more balanced picture and is well worth a read. It even indicates that coconut oil may not be quite what a lot of people are making out, but I always first and foremost treat big people as intelligent adults, and hope that if anyone might be interested in using coconut oil for cooking, that they do extensive research themselves.
Many health organizations have advised against the consumption of high amounts of coconut oil due to its high levels of saturated fat, including the United States Food and Drug Administration.
However, when Thomas Brenna, a professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University took a close impartial look at those studies, he stated that, “Most of the studies involving coconut oil were done with partially hydrogenated coconut oil, which researchers used because they needed to raise the cholesterol levels of their rabbits in order to collect certain data. Virgin coconut oil, which has not been chemically treated, is a different thing altogether in terms of a health risk perspective. And maybe it isn’t so bad for you after all.”
The fact is, all saturated fats are not created equal
The operative word here is “created,” because some saturated fats occur naturally, while other fats are artificially manipulated into a saturated state through the man-made process called hydrogenation.
Hydrogenation manipulates vegetable and seed oils by adding hydrogen atoms while heating the oil, producing a rancid, thickened substance that really only benefits processed food shelf life and corporate profits — just about all experts now agree, hydrogenation offers nothing good for your health.
These manipulated saturated fats are also called trans-fats, and you should avoid them like the plague. But if one form of saturated fat is bad for you, does that mean all saturated fat is bad for you? Absolutely not!
The tropics’ best kept secret
The truth about coconut oil is obvious to anyone who has studied the health of those who live in native tropical cultures, where coconut has been a primary dietary staple for thousands of years.
Back in the 1930s, Dr. Weston Price found South Pacific Islanders whose diets were high in coconut to be healthy and trim, despite high dietary fat, and heart disease was virtually non-existent. Similarly, in 1981, researchers studying two Polynesian communities for whom coconut was the primary caloric energy source found them to have excellent cardiovascular health and fitness. Shocking eh?
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Myths and Facts about Coconut Oil
Myth-1: Being composed predominantly of saturated fats, it raises cholesterol level and increases the risk of heart attack.
Fact: Common man understands only “Bad Cholesterol” by the term “Cholesterol” and most of them are unaware of the fact that there are two types of cholesterol and one of them is good for health. Further, most of them do not know that so far, contribution of saturated fats towards rise in bad cholesterol level could not be proved. This belief is the gift of some anti-coconut oil and anti-saturated fats mission powered by some edible oil producers to promote non conventional oils such as soy bean oil, rice husk oil etc. The fact is, to your dismay, that Coconut Oil raises the Good Cholesterol (High Density Lipoproteins) level which is beneficial for health. This good cholesterol helps lower the Bad Cholesterol (Low Density Lipoproteins) level and actually clears the blockages in the arteries and protects your heart.
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STUDY SHOWS HEART DISEASE ABSENT IN COCONUT EATING POPULATION
A study published in the medical journal Tropical and Geographical Medicine found that coronary heart disease, the world's number one cause of death, is virtually unknown in a coconut eating population of Sri Lanka.
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Coconut Oil: Healthy or Harmful?
Coconut oil is hot right now. Everyone's talking about it... the Paleo community recommends it, there are books touting it as a miracle food, and even Dr. Oz is now on board. It seems as though the alternative medicine world is firmly in the pro-coconut-oil camp, and their message is spreading. The mainstream nutrition world however, including dietitians, medical doctors, and educators, believe otherwise. According to them, coconut oil is high in saturated fat, particularly lauric and myristic acids... two of the most dangerous saturated fatty acids around. Coconut oil will raise your cholesterol more than any other food, they say. Those who eat it must have a death wish.
How can both sides of this argument be so far apart? The pro-coconut-oil group says it's a miracle health food... but the anti-coconut-oil camp says it'll kill you. Welp, someone's wrong. Let's get to the bottom of it...
The Saturated Fat Thing
As mentioned above, coconut oil is high in lauric acid and myristic acid, which are considered to be two of the most heart-stopping fatty acids in existence. This evidence is largely based on short term studies using isolated fatty acids, showing that their consumption increases cholesterol levels (1, 2). As I explained in my last post on nutritionism, this is interesting and good to know, but it doesn't necessarily mean eating foods high in these fats, like coconut oil, will have the same effect. Food is more complex than we know. This is a piece to the puzzle, but not the only piece to the puzzle. What about studies involving real coconut oil?
Coconut-Eating Cultures
Let's step off of coconut oil for a moment, and focus on the whole coconut. It's slightly different, yes, but still relevant; coconut is mostly fat anyway. We've got a few sets of people out in the Eastern Pacific island area who eat a lot of coconut... unrefined coconut of course... and there's a lot we can learn from them. If the medical establishment is right, that the fats in coconut clog our arteries and kill us, then these people should be in serious trouble.
Tokelau - The first example is the island of Tokelau, which was the subject of a major epidemiological study from 1968-1982 (10, 11). The Tokelauan diet is based on coconut and fish; over half their calories come from coconut, hence 40-50% of their total calories are from saturated fat. This is absurdly high. For reference, the Dietary Guidelines recommend that number be less than 10%... because any more than that increases your risk for cardiovascular disease. So are these Tokelau coconut eaters dying left and right? No. According to the study, they have low rates of diabetes, healthy blood pressures, good cholesterol levels, and no trace of any recent heart attacks. No trace! Coconut for the win.
Kitava - The diet on the island of Kitava has been studied extensively as well (12). While the available foods are similar to those on Tokelau, the Kitavans eat them in very different proportions. The Kitavans get about 21% of their calories from fat, 17% of which is from saturated fat. Just about all of this is from coconut, and although less than on Tokelau, it's still far more saturated fat than we are recommended to eat. Overall, their diet is very high in carbohydrates, about 69%, and most of that comes from starchy tubers like sweet potatoes and taro. But are they healthy? Heart disease or stroke? No trace. Obesity? Nope. Diabetes? No sir. Senile dementia?? Not even a little. What about longevity? There were reports of one man reaching over 100 years of age. And if you didn't die in infancy or of infectious disease, it was expected that you would live well into your 70s. Quite impressive if I do say so myself. No killer coconut here.
Neither of these societies are plagued with the chronic diseases we see every day, and they eat more coconut fat than maybe anyone else in the world. Take it for what it's worth, it's just an observation... but if coconut fat were really that bad, these people would have died off long ago.
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I could post a lot more of this kind of thing, but it would be unfairly one sided. It does tend to make you wonder just why organisations like the FDA and the WHO are so against it, while the FDA quite literally turn a blind eye to things such as artificial sweeteners. Just saying.
The last article is definitely worth a read, and will balance out some of the claims that I've posted here from other websites. It's three pages long, so I'll save the thread from the entire article, but it's very professionally researched and offers good advice overall.
The Truth about Coconut Oil Is It Really Healthy? 
