Saturated Fats

March 1st, 2021 / By Ryan Heeney

Coconut oil has started to gain traction in the mainstream nutrition scene recently for some of its unique benefits. While some trends can be hit or miss, this time I think it’s spot on.

Coconut oil is composed of medium-chain triglycerides (MCT's) which makes it unique because most fats are made up of long-chain triglycerides. Medium-chain triglycerides are taken to the liver where they are used as a quick source of energy or are turned into ketones. MCT's have a variety of studied benefits that include increased weight loss (by raising leptin and peptide YY), helping manage epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease, improvement in blood sugar management and antibacterial and antifungal properties. One of the medium-chain triglycerides contained in coconut oil that is getting a lot of attention is lauric acid and there's an in-depth analysis into that fatty acid here.

But in my opinion, the real benefit of coconut oil comes from it's level of saturation.  For this to make sense, you have to depart from the mainstream idea that saturated fat is bad. The mainstream health community has started to come around on this and even Time Magazine dedicated their June, 2014 cover to butter. 

To be clear, the consensus from the Time article only expressed butter as "benign" and not exactly a health food, but nonetheless this is still a sign of the mainstream community softening its stance on saturated fat.

I have to admit, it's pretty amusing when I hear people warn against the dangers of saturated fat but then willl recommend coconut oil in the same breath. This frustration comes from the fact that coconut oil is the most saturated fat available. The whole reason certain saturated animal fats are demonized in mainstream nutrition is because of the fact that they are saturated!

Furthermore the FDA reversed their stance on dietary cholesterol which you can read about here:

https://nutritionfacts.org/questions/why-did-the-fda-remove-restrictions-on-cholesterol/

I don’t know it it’s just because coconut oil is “plant based” and that makes me people “feel better” about it, as opposed to other saturated fats which are “animal based” but I have to admit the level of contradictions within the nutrition world are perplexing to say the least.

Here you can see a breakdown of common oils and their fatty acid composition ranked from least saturated (at the top) to most saturated (at the bottom), with coconut oil being at the very bottom (below butter and beef fat):

But what makes an oil saturated or unsaturated? Why does the level of saturation matter?

Well I think and expert from a previous article of mine breaks it down fairly well:

“A monounsaturated fat is when one of the bonds (hence the name “mono”) between two carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon chain is a double bond, seen below:

A saturated fat is when all the bonds in hydrocarbon chain between carbon atoms are single bonds.  All the carbons are then also “saturated” with hydrogen atoms (hence the name “saturated”), seen below:

A polyunsaturated fat is a fatty acid in which two or more of the bonds (hence the name “poly”) between carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon chain are double bonds, seen below:

And again, contrary to their name, double bonds are actually more vulnerable to being broken apart, and therefore oxidized. The more double bonds a fatty acid has, the more likely it will be susceptible to attack by an oxygen molecule. Once oxygen enters the fatty acid chain, the fatty acid becomes damaged or oxidized. Oxidation leads to free radicals and many, many other harmful things. Free radicals lead to cellular damage in your body that can manifest both internally in the form of damaged organs/glands and even externally in the form of quickly aging skin.

This is why the highly unsaturated oils must be kept in the fridge and need to be in a closed container, because they react quickly to heat and oxygen. A very saturated fat like coconut oil can be left uncovered for months. The same heat and oxygen in the air that causes the highly unsaturated cooking oil to go rancid in our kitchen, is the same heat and oxygen in our blood that causes the harmful process of oxidation when we ingest the oil, and it ends up in our blood stream.”

I think researcher Danny Roddy breaks it down really nicely in his book "The Peat Whisperer".

"All fats and oils, whether of vegetable or animal origin, are a combination of saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids.  The major difference between these fats is their degree of saturation.  Highly unsaturated fats (polyunsaturated fats, or PUFA) have more carbon double bonds, while saturated fats have fewer double bonds and more hydrogen bonds.

The susceptibility of a fat to oxidation (combining with oxygen) is governed by its number of double bonds.  Oxidation, in the context of oxidative energy (the ability of the mitochondria to use oxygen), is beneficial, but the oxidation of polyunsaturated fats effectively steals oxygen from the mitochondria and produces breakdown products called prostaglandins.  Prostaglandins are highly problematic as they produce inflammation and intensify the effects of serotonin and estrogen."

In summary, the more unsaturated an oil is the more likely it is to oxidize.

This is why coconut oil is able to be left out at room temperature for two years or longer without going rancid. Even clarified butter, while not as saturated, can still last at room temperature for months without going rancid. 

Unsaturated oils such as canola, flax, fish oil, etc. are much less stable and the oxygen in the air will oxidize these oils and cause them to go rancid much more quickly if they aren't kept in a sealed, dark, containers in the refrigerator limiting their exposure to heat and light.

The same problem arises when these fatty acids hit our warm, oxygen rich bloodstream and become more oxidized the more unsaturated they are. The oxygen in the air that turns these fats rancid, is the the same oxygen in our blood which will cause these oils to be oxidized as well. The heat from our bodies adds further damage to these delicate unsaturated oils, causing harmful free radicals to be produced.

In my opinion, this end result is responsible for a lot of the health problems we see today. Cate Shanahan goes into the implications of polyunsaturated fat in the diet further in this interview.

In the very least I would recommend staying away from the typical "junk foods" that contain high levels of polyunsaturated fat. Fried foods, store bought pastries and cookies, chips, french fries, salad dressings (that aren't low-fat or non-fat) and anything else that contains vegetable and seed oils.

For cooking I have found that coconut oil is extremely versatile, cheap and easy to use. For olive oil, virgin and extra-virgin (the degree to which they’ve been heated during processing) is what you want to go with because it’s mostly monounsaturated but in coconut oil's case you want to buy the refined version instead. The refined version is hypoallergenic and free of possible irritants that are found in the virgin and extra-virgin unrefined versions. Coconut oil is extremely durable due to its level of saturation and is not damaged in the refining process unlike unsaturated oils. One big, added benefit to buying refined coconut oil is the fact that it is completely tasteless and free of any coconut taste (as opposed to the unrefined, virgin or extra-virgin types) and goes well when cooking any food at all.

Other good options for cooking include butter, ghee or rendered tallow. These oils are also highly saturated and don't oxidize and destabilize in heat as easy as the more unsaturated oils. Coconut oil is still the champ in my opinion, though.

While coconut oil may be an incredible food, my recommendation is to still keep overall levels of fat in the diet fairly low. I think 20-30% of your daily calories coming from fat (saturated sources) is a good place to start. Coconut oil, butter, milk, cheese, beef, lamb, egg yolk are all good sources.

I would like to end on an interesting note from Dr. Raymond Peat's article Coconut Oil:

"In the l940s, farmers attempted to use cheap coconut oil for fattening their animals, but they found that it made them lean, active and hungry. For a few years, an antithyroid drug was found to make the livestock get fat while eating less food, but then it was found to be a strong carcinogen, and it also probably produced hypothyroidism in the people who ate the meat. By the late l940s, it was found that the same antithyroid effect, causing animals to get fat without eating much food, could be achieved by using soy beans and corn as feed.

Later, an animal experiment fed diets that were low or high in total fat, and in different groups the fat was provided by pure coconut oil, or a pure unsaturated oil, or by various mixtures of the two oils. At the end of their lives, the animals' obesity increased directly in proportion to the ratio of unsaturated oil to coconut oil in their diet, and was not related to the total amount of fat they had consumed. That is, animals which ate just a little pure unsaturated oil were fat, and animals which ate a lot of coconut oil were lean."