Coconut Oil - Some Of The Things To Know About This

What is coconut oil and its uses?

COCONUT OIL – In recent years, coconut oil has increasingly become popular, and here are some things you should know about this.

The uses of cooking oil range from cooking, and baking, and even in someone’s beauty routine. This oil is derived from the flesh of coconuts. It can be categorized into two types – virgin and refined. The former type is less processed than the refined version.

A tablespoon (tbsp) serving of this oil has the following nutritional content:

Calories: 104
Protein: 0 grams (g)
Fat: 11.5 g
Saturated fat: 9.6 g
Carbohydrates: 0 g
Fiber: 0 g
Sugar: 0 g

As seen in the data above, it has no fiber and little to no other vitamins or minerals but it contains vitamin E.

But it is pretty much different from the other types despite the almost similar nutritional profile. And what makes it different is because of the specific types of fats it contains. 83 percent of this is saturated fat which is way much more compared to olive oil which only has 14 percent of saturated fat.

It is actually popular in ketogenic and Paleo diets.

According to a post from Harvard, the greatest worldwide producer of this is the Philippines followed by Indonesia and India. The biggest consumers are the Philippines, European Union, the United States, and India.

Here are some of its benefits:

It has MCTs, a type of saturated fat, that helps increase the number of calories you burn.
It may fight against harmful microorganisms such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus pyogenes, Escherichia coli, and Helicobacter pylori.
It can help improve skin health, hair growth, and oral health.
It can be a good source of antioxidants such as tocopherols, tocotrienols, phytosterols, flavonoids, and polyphenols.

Moreover, findings published in 2018 stated that extra virgin coconut oil has the same effect as that olive oil on cholesterol levels.