Is coconut oil healthy?

Coconut oil had a remarkable run. Within a few years it went from a niche baking fat to a jar on every wellness shelf, sold as a metabolism booster, a heart-friendly fat and a shortcut to burning belly fat. Then heart organizations pushed back, and the headlines flipped. If you have a jar in your pantry, you've probably wondered whether coconut oil is good for you, bad for you, or somewhere in between.

The trials give a fairly clear answer. Coconut oil raises LDL cholesterol compared with the unsaturated oils most people would use instead, it doesn't help with weight, and the MCT research behind many of its claims tested a different oil. None of that makes a spoonful dangerous. This page goes through what's actually in coconut oil, what it does to your cholesterol, why the HDL argument doesn't rescue it, where the MCT and weight-loss claims came from, how it compares with olive oil and seed oils, and how to use it if you like the taste.

What's Actually in Coconut Oil?

Coconut oil is almost pure fat, and about 83 percent of that fat is saturated, according to USDA FoodData Central. That's a bigger share than in butter or lard. Here's how a tablespoon compares with the fats it usually replaces:

Values from USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy entries 171412, 173410, 171401, 171413 and 172336, scaled to one tablespoon and rounded.

Not all saturated fats are the same molecule, and coconut oil's mix is unusual. By weight it's about 42 percent lauric acid (a 12-carbon fat), 17 percent myristic acid and 9 percent palmitic acid. The two fats that make up MCT oil, caprylic acid (C8) and capric acid (C10), add up to only about 12 percent. Just 6 percent of the oil is monounsaturated and 2 percent polyunsaturated. That's why coconut oil sets solid in a cool kitchen while olive oil stays liquid.

Is Coconut Oil Bad for Your Cholesterol?

It raises LDL cholesterol compared with the oils you'd use instead. The strongest summary is the 2020 meta-analysis by Neelakantan and colleagues in Circulation, which pooled 16 clinical trials that lasted at least two weeks. Compared with non-tropical vegetable oils such as olive, canola, soybean and corn oil, coconut oil raised LDL by 10.47 mg/dL and HDL by 4.00 mg/dL. The LDL result held when the authors dropped the non-randomized and lower-quality trials. Coconut oil didn't significantly change body weight, body fat, waist size, blood sugar or C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation.

An earlier review reached the same place by a different route. Eyres and colleagues (2016) went through 8 clinical trials and 13 observational studies and found coconut oil generally raised total and LDL cholesterol more than unsaturated plant oils, but less than butter. Their conclusion was that replacing coconut oil with unsaturated fats would shift blood lipids in the direction linked to lower heart risk.

One well-run trial pushes the other way, and it's worth knowing about. In Khaw and colleagues' 2018 trial, 94 healthy adults aged 50 to 75 ate 50 grams a day of extra virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil or butter for four weeks. Butter raised LDL compared with both oils, while coconut oil's LDL didn't differ from olive oil's. It's a real result, but it's one four-week trial against the pooled weight of many, and the authors themselves said it didn't change the advice to cut saturated fat.

LDL matters because it's a cause of heart disease, not just a marker. A 2017 European Atherosclerosis Society consensus statement led by Ference reviewed genetic studies, cohorts and drug trials and concluded that LDL causes atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and that the longer and higher your exposure, the greater the risk. An extra 10 mg/dL from your daily cooking oil is small, but that exposure adds up over decades of cooking.

Doesn't Coconut Oil Raise Good HDL Cholesterol?

It does, and that's the main argument coconut oil's fans make. Lauric acid raises HDL strongly. A 2003 meta-analysis of 60 controlled feeding trials by Mensink and colleagues found lauric acid greatly increased total cholesterol, but so much of the rise was HDL that lauric-rich oils actually lowered the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol.

The same paper warned against reading too much into that. Its authors wrote that shifts in these markers shouldn't be taken as changes in heart risk unless outcome studies confirm them, and they called the effect of lauric-rich fats on coronary disease uncertain. There are no long-term outcome trials of coconut oil. Meanwhile LDL's causal role is settled. The higher HDL is a reason for curiosity, not a reason to choose coconut oil over olive oil.

Why Do Cardiologists Say to Avoid Coconut Oil?

Mostly because of the American Heart Association's position. Its 2017 presidential advisory on dietary fats, led by Sacks, reviewed the controlled trials comparing coconut oil with unsaturated oils and found coconut oil raised LDL in them. The advisory advised against using coconut oil, because it raises LDL and has, in its words, "no known offsetting favorable effects."

The same advisory found that, in the core trials, replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated vegetable oil lowered cardiovascular disease by about 30 percent. Our page on whether seed oils are bad for you walks through those trials and the case against them, so they aren't repeated here.

For daily numbers, the 2013 AHA/ACC lifestyle guideline (Eckel and colleagues) advises adults who would benefit from lower LDL to aim for 5 to 6 percent of calories from saturated fat. On a 2,000-calorie diet that's about 13 grams a day. One tablespoon of coconut oil, at 11.2 grams, uses almost all of it before you've counted any cheese, meat or dessert.

MCT Claims vs What Coconut Oil Actually Contains

Much of coconut oil's reputation was borrowed from MCT oil. Medium-chain triglycerides are fats with shorter carbon chains that the body absorbs quickly and sends straight to the liver, where they're burned for energy or turned into ketones. The MCT oil used in studies is made mostly of caprylic (C8) and capric (C10) acid. Coconut oil gets called "a natural source of MCTs," but those two fats make up only about 12 percent of it. Its main fat, lauric acid, has 12 carbons, and in feeding trials it raises LDL cholesterol much as long-chain saturated fats do.

A direct comparison shows the gap. Vandenberghe and colleagues (2017) gave nine healthy adults equal doses of coconut oil, classic MCT oil and pure C8 oil. Pure C8 produced the most ketones by far, and coconut oil's ketone response peaked at only a quarter of the C8 peak.

Even real MCT oil does less than its marketing implies. A meta-analysis by Mumme and Stonehouse (2015) of 13 trials with 749 adults found that replacing long-chain fats with C8 and C10 oil reduced body weight by about half a kilogram, and the authors detected commercial bias in the studies. In one of the better trials, St-Onge and Bosarge (2008) put 49 overweight adults on a 16-week weight-loss program with 18 to 24 grams a day of MCT oil or olive oil. The 31 who finished on MCT oil ended about 1.7 kilograms lighter than the olive oil group. That's a modest effect from a purified product, and it doesn't transfer to a jar that's mostly lauric acid.

Does Coconut Oil Help You Lose Weight?

Not in the trials that compared it with other oils. Most of the belly-fat claims trace back to small studies. In the most quoted one, Assunção and colleagues (2009) gave 40 Brazilian women with abdominal obesity 30 mL a day of coconut oil or soybean oil for 12 weeks, alongside a reduced-calorie diet and 50 minutes of walking a day. Both groups lost weight, and only the coconut group's waist got smaller. With 20 women per group, a diet and a walking program doing most of the work, that's a hypothesis rather than a fat-loss method.

The larger body of evidence doesn't back it up. In the Neelakantan meta-analysis, coconut oil had no significant effect on body weight, body fat or waist size compared with non-tropical oils, and Khaw's four-week trial found no weight change on 50 grams a day. A small crossover study by LaBarrie and St-Onge (2017), funded through a small-business grant to a food company, found a coconut oil-rich meal didn't raise calorie burn or fullness in 15 teenagers with excess weight compared with corn oil.

The arithmetic is the real issue. At about 121 calories a tablespoon, coconut oil is as calorie-dense as any other oil, and adding spoonfuls to coffee or smoothies adds calories. Weight loss comes from a sustained calorie deficit, and no cooking oil changes that. Jim, 26, who lost 24 pounds in three months, described the part that actually worked: "I kept telling myself I'd start Monday. FitCraft made me start on a Wednesday and I haven't stopped." If the training side is what keeps slipping, see how the workout apps built for weight loss compare. FitCraft is one of them: a 3D AI coach talks you through each workout and says your name, and leaderboards and collectible cards give you a reason to come back tomorrow.

What About Pacific Islanders Who Eat a Lot of Coconut?

This is the strongest-sounding argument for coconut oil, and the review by Eyres and colleagues looked at it directly. In observational studies of traditional diets, eating coconut flesh or squeezed coconut cream wasn't linked to worse heart outcomes. The authors cautioned that those communities ate and lived very differently from people on a typical Western diet, so the findings can't be applied to adding coconut oil to a Western menu.

There's also a difference between the foods. Whole coconut brings fiber and comes inside a traditional diet. A refined jar of oil is the fat without the rest of the coconut, added on top of whatever else you eat.

Coconut Oil vs Olive Oil and Seed Oils

Can you use coconut oil instead of olive oil? In a recipe, yes. For your health, it's a downgrade. A tablespoon of olive oil has about 1.9 grams of saturated fat against coconut oil's 11.2, and most of olive oil's fat is monounsaturated. Olive oil also has outcome data that coconut oil lacks. In the PREDIMED trial (Estruch and colleagues, 2018), 7,447 Spanish adults at high cardiovascular risk who ate a Mediterranean diet with extra virgin olive oil had about 30 percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths than a control group told to cut fat.

The seed oil debate is the mirror image of the coconut oil one. Canola, soybean and sunflower oils are mostly unsaturated, and they're the oils the AHA advisory found lowered heart disease when they replaced saturated fat. The online claims that they're toxic or inflammatory don't hold up well in the trials, as our seed oil review shows. On heart health, olive oil and the unsaturated seed oils such as canola sit at the top, and coconut oil sits with butter and lard.

Coconut Oil, MCT Drinks and Exercise

Spooning coconut oil into coffee before a workout has become a habit for some people, usually on the promise of steady energy. There's no good evidence it improves training, and the closest study points the other way. Jeukendrup and colleagues (1998) had seven trained cyclists drink about 85 grams of MCT oil over a two-hour ride. Their power in the time trial that followed was 17 to 18 percent lower than with a placebo drink, and they reported intestinal cramping. Adding MCT to a carbohydrate drink did no better than the carbohydrate alone.

For most workouts, the fuel that helps is carbohydrate, and the meal that helps afterward includes protein. Fat of any kind digests slowly, so a big dose right before training is more likely to sit heavy than to help.

How to Use Coconut Oil If You Like It

You don't have to throw the jar out. Use it like butter: an ingredient you enjoy in measured amounts, not a health food.

1. Use it for flavor, by the teaspoon. A teaspoon has about 3.7 grams of saturated fat. That's enough to carry the taste in a curry, a stir-fry or a batch of granola.
2. Make olive or canola oil your default. Keep coconut oil for the dishes where its flavor or texture matters, such as some baking and Southeast Asian cooking.
3. Count it in your saturated fat for the day. If your LDL is high, a tablespoon a day of coconut oil leaves almost no room for anything else.
4. Don't add it to coffee or smoothies for health. It adds calories without the metabolic benefits it's sold on.
5. Skin and hair are a separate question. Using it as a moisturizer has nothing to do with the cholesterol evidence here.

It also helps to know that saturated fats differ by source. More than half the saturated fat in dark chocolate is stearic acid, which has had little effect on LDL cholesterol in feeding trials, while coconut oil's is mostly lauric and myristic acid, which raise it. A couple of squares of chocolate and a spoonful of coconut oil aren't the same kind of fat. Our page on whether dark chocolate is healthy covers the rest of that story, and our look at whether almond milk is healthy shows the same pattern from another angle: a food's reputation and what the trials measured are often two different things.

So, Should You Eat Coconut Oil?

Eat it if you like it, in small amounts, and don't eat it for your health. Coconut oil raises LDL cholesterol compared with the oils you'd otherwise use, it doesn't help with weight, and its MCT halo belongs to a different product. The higher HDL it brings hasn't been shown to protect the heart. None of that makes a teaspoon in a curry a problem.

If your LDL is already high, or heart disease runs in your family, keep coconut oil to an occasional ingredient and cook with olive or canola oil. If your cholesterol is fine, treat it the way you'd treat butter: an occasional ingredient that tastes good, counted toward the day's saturated fat.