"Coconut Oil and Abdominal Fat"
I was surprised to see
in this popular infographic
that there was evidently promising evidence
that coconut oil could help with obesity.
Well, if you pump the stomachs of rats
with purified medium- chain fatty acids,
one component of coconut oil,
they end up eating less food,
but you don't know if there's any relevance to humans
until you put it to the test.
Researchers compared breakfasts with the same amount
of dairy fat, coconut oil fat, or tallow (beef fat),
and no effect on hunger, fullness, satisfaction,
or how much they then went on to eat at lunchtime.
So where did this whole idea that coconut fat
was somehow different come from?
Well, six years ago, an open-label pilot study was published.
They asked 20 men and women to eat 2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day
for a month, and the men appeared to lose
about an inch off their waist.
Now open-label means that the participants knew
what they were eating; there wasn't like some placebo control.
In fact, there was no control group at all,
so you don't know if the effects would have
just happened anyway without the coconut oil.
There's a well-recognized effect in dietary studies
where just being in a dietary study under observation
tends to lead to a reduction in caloric intake,
because you know they're going to weigh you
and looking over your shoulder.
But there had never been a controlled study
of coconut oil and waistlines in men and women until 2015.
About a hundred men and women were given
about a tablespoon of coconut oil a day for three months
and lost nearly an inch
inch off their waist
after three months compared to control.
What did the control group get instead?
Nothing. There was no placebo,
and so they were comparing doing something with doing nothing.
And when one does that, there's often a placebo effect
regardless of the true efficacy of the treatment.
And they also suggested the coconut oil group
may want to take their dose with fruit.
And if they did end up eating more fruit, that in and of itself may help,
as despite its sugar content, fruit consumption
tends to be associated with anti-obesity effects.
What we need to see if coconut oil has some special effect
is to give people a spoonful of coconut oil versus some other oil
and see if there's any difference. And when you do that—
2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day versus 2 tablespoons of soybean oil a day—
no significant difference in waistlines.
But what did happen was a significant increase in insulin resistance
in the coconut oil group, which is what eventually causes type 2 diabetes,
despite being told to increase fruits and vegetables,
cut down on sugars and animal fat, and despite an exercise program
of walking 50 minutes a day, four days a week.
The only other placebo-controlled study of coconut oil and waistlines
was published in 2017,
and no significant changes in weight or waist or hip measurements,
total fat, belly fat, nor butt fat.
No benefit to coconut oil for obesity over placebo
shown in any study to date,
so how can coconut oil proponents get away with saying otherwise?
Well, they like to talk about studies like this,
showing that Pacific islanders
who ate more traditional coconut-based diets
are slimmer than those eating more modern diets
with fewer coconut products.
But guess what they were eating instead?
The modernized dietary pattern was primarily characterized
by high intakes of sausage, eggs, and processed foods.