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General Nutrition

Coconut Oil: Good or Bad for You?

November 1, 2018 by Cindy Dallow

Controversy surrounding coconut oil raised its greasy head in a big way when a prominent physician recently called it “poison.” Fans of coconut oil went wild, so I decided to do some in-depth research on this miracle oil or poison, depending on what team you are on, and here is my take.

Coconut oil has become extremely popular, hailed by proponents as good for you in place of most other oils. Opponents claim the saturated fat it contains probably raises your LDL-cholesterol levels and risk of heart disease.

Personally, I’m a butter, canola and olive oil fan. I have resisted jumping on the coconut oil bandwagon and any recipe that calls for coconut oil I substitute my three aforementioned favorites, depending on the recipe, and go on my merry way.

To understand the current information about coconut oil, you first have to know a little about fatty acids. In food, fatty acids are found in triglycerides, which is a glycerol molecule with three fatty acids attached to it. During metabolism, the glycerol portion is stripped off and the fatty acids are set free to float around in our blood stream. Having a lot of the wrong kind swimming through your veins and arteries is not ideal if they clump together and clog things up. Hello heart disease and stroke!

The composition of fatty acids differs in big ways. They are all made with a carbon chain (string of carbon atoms connected to each other) and each has a different length of chain, the number of carbon atoms, which dictates how they are metabolized in the human body. The number of double bonds between carbon atoms is important too. The more double bonds there are, the less hydrogenated the fatty acid is and the more likely that fatty acid will help lower your cholesterol level. These differences in fatty acids dictate what they do in our bodies.

Which brings me to – more is not always better…at least when it comes to the length of fatty acids. There are short-chain fatty acids (4-6 carbon atoms or C4 – C6 SCFA), medium-chain (C8 – C10 MCFA), and long-chain fatty acids (C12 – C18, LCFA). The media often refers to MCFA as medium chain triglycerides or MCT oils. This is not technically correct because fatty acids act individually once they are hydrolyzed (the breakdown of a substance by the addition of water) during metabolism.

The fatty acid in coconut oil in the largest amount is lauric acid (C12, LCFA), mistakenly referred to as MCT by many people. While coconut oil can technically be classified as a medium-chained fat, it behaves like a long-chain fat within biological systems like the human gastrointestinal tract.

MCFA are smaller and have a lower molecular weight and are soluble in water. This means they dissolve in the aqueous phase of the intestine and are absorbed fairly quickly. Long chain fatty acids (LCFA) do not dissolve easily and must form micelles, meaning they take longer to be absorbed. The change in solubility occurs at C10, meaning that lauric acid behaves like a long chain fatty acid (LCFA) in human metabolism.

Medium chain fatty acids (MCFA) also go a different route once in the bloodstream than LCFA. Because MCFA have a lower molecular weight than LCFA, this facilitates the action of pancreatic lipase, which hydrolyzes the MCFA quickly and efficiently. The end result is that MCFA are absorbed quicker than LCFA and used almost as fast as glucose for energy.

Coconut oil has two other saturated fatty acids, myristic and palmitic (C12 and C14, respectively), which are the main fatty acids and LDL-cholesterol raising agents. Both of these fatty acids are also found in palm kernel oil, which is used interchangeably with coconut oil in the food industry because they are so similar in composition.

You can see in the photo on the left that coconut oil is solid at room temperature like all other saturated fats, unlike medium chain triglyceride (MCT) oils, which are liquid at room temperature.

The bottom line is that coconut oil is not the same thing as MCT oil and it behaves like other saturated fats in human metabolism and may raise your cholesterol level. That’s why I recommend you stick with healthy vegetable oils that have consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, such as olive and canola.

The research is ongoing and nothing in nutritional science is written in stone, but for now, if your LDL-cholesterol levels are already high, avoid cooking with coconut oil.

As for my favorite fat, butter, it does falls into the saturated fat category along with coconut oil. I use it for baking, but reduce the amount to half of what the recipe calls for. I use olive, avocado, and canola oil for cooking, which work quite well in most recipes.

You can do the same with coconut oil and, swap it for a healthier unsaturated vegetable oil or just use less of it. Either method will produce good results.

If you have a huge jar of coconut oil and are now thinking, “great, what do I do with this,” I encourage you to use it for other things besides cooking. It makes a great skin softener. Smooth a dab on rough dry elbows, dry cracked heels and your hands. It absorbs quickly and smells pretty darn good.

Mix coconut oil with plain white sugar and you have yourself the makings of an excellent exfoliating and moisturizer for the shower.

So, coconut oil is not actually poison, but it’s not all that healthy for you either (bad?) but works great as a moisturizer (good!) so it does have a place in the cupboard, just the one in the bathroom rather than the kitchen.

Filed Under: General Nutrition Tagged With: coconut oil, heart disease, nutrition advice, olive oil

Why You Should Eat Pop Corn

May 10, 2017 by Cindy Dallow

Quick question: Which food has the most antioxidants:

Apples

Whole wheat bread

Popcorn

Broccoli

If you said popcorn, you were right! Recent research by Dr. Joe Vinson at the University of Scranton in Pensylvania, reveals that popcorn has more “polyphenols” than most fruits or vegetables.

Polyphenols are known for their role in preventing many degenerative diseases, especially cardiovascular disease and some cancers. They may also reduce some of the oxidative damage caused by strenuous exercise, which aids the recovery process.

Dr. Vinson’s research shows that popcorn contains up to 300 mg of polyphenols per serving compared to 160 for one serving of most fruits. Sweet corn has only 114 mg per serving, making popcorn a high antioxidant food.

And there’s more good news: popcorn is the only snack food in the American diet that is 100% unprocessed whole grain. All the other grains are processed and contain additional ingredients. A single serving of popcorn will provide >70% of the daily requirement for whole grain. Most people get about half a serving of whole grain each day so popcorn could fill that void quite easily.

“Those hulls deserve more respect,” said Vinson, “They are nutritional gold nuggets.”

Of course, if you slather it with butter and salt, you will add a lot of calories

But eating it air-popped or microwaved is a good way to go. Microwave popcorn has more calories than air-popped but the amount of polyphenols is the same.

So next time you need a quick, healthy snack, reach for the popcorn and enjoy!

Filed Under: General Nutrition

Easy Peasy Bean Soup

January 3, 2017 by Cindy Dallow

A lot of people are using prepared meals these days because they are supposedly easier than cooking from scratch. But after making Toni’s 10 Bean Soup from the Women’s Bean Project yesterday, I was scratching my head as to why people think cooking takes so long. Anyway, here’s my A+ recommendation for this kind of soup!

To make this soup, look for it in your local grocery store. I found this one at King Sooper’s here in Greeley, CO.

[Read more…] about Easy Peasy Bean Soup

Filed Under: General Nutrition, Recipes Tagged With: 10 Bean Soup, Bean Soup, cook from scratch, Greeley, king sooper's, recipe, soup, women's bean project

Sneaky Little Sports Drinks

December 23, 2016 by Cindy Dallow

There’s a plethora of sports drinks on the market, and you’d have to be living under a rock not to know it. But are they really necessary? Do they deliver on what they promise? And is it possible to make your own sports drink for a lot less money?

Let’s take those questions one at a time. Are sports drinks necessary? For people in certain situations, yes. For example, after prolonged exercise (longer than 60 minutes), some sports drinks can help replenish electrolytes that the body excretes through sweat. Electrolytes (including sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium) carry electrical charges that help stimulate muscles and nerves. They also regulate the amount of fluids throughout your body, which affects blood pressure, blood volume, and cellular function. In a nutshell, electrolytes are good, and if you’re a “salty sweater” – that is, someone with a high sweat rate – it’s especially important that you replenish electrolytes after intense activity.

[Read more…] about Sneaky Little Sports Drinks

Filed Under: General Nutrition, Sports Nutrition Tagged With: blood pressure, electrolytes, exercise, julie hansen, magnesium citrate, Nuun Active, sodium chloride, sports drinks, WebMD

Are You a Fe-Woman?

December 23, 2016 by Cindy Dallow

So you’re training for a 5k (or 10k or marathon or whatever) and you have a training plan. You know your heart rate, your training zones, and your mile pace. But none of it will do you any good if you are low in iron.

Say what? Being low in iron can negate all the hard training you do? That’s right, it can.  In fact, the iron content in your body’s tissues is one of the main factors that determines your aerobic capacity, which of course, greatly affects athletic performance.

The body uses iron to produce oxygen transporters – such as hemoglobin and myoglobin – and to produce energy by serving as a cofactor to many energy-using enzymes. Strenuous training increases the physiological demand for oxygen which then increases the demand on the transport systems as well. Hemoglobin then carries oxygen from the lungs to all bodily tissues and myoglobin in the muscle stores oxygen for use during exercise.

[Read more…] about Are You a Fe-Woman?

Filed Under: General Nutrition, Sports Nutrition Tagged With: 5k, aerobic, athletes, diet, Fe, female athlete triad, IDA, Iron, iron deficiency anemia, iron depletion, iron supplements, low iron, marathon, oxygen, oxygen transporters, training, vitamin C

A Beer a Day Keeps the Doctor Away??

December 23, 2016 by Cindy Dallow

Quite possibly so!  Lest you think you are dreaming (go ahead and pinch yourself), there really are significant health bennies to having a beer after a workout.

According to new research, both regular and non-alcoholic beer (NA) have natural chemicals in them called “polyphenols”: substances that help reduce inflammation and the risk for an upper respiratory tract illness (URTI).

In fact, some 2000 organic compounds have been identified in beer, including 50 polyphenolic compounds from barley and hops. A liter contains between 366 and 875 mg of polyphenols, making it a significant contributor to the average American’s phenolic intake. To top it off, polyphenols from beer are rapidly absorbed and have been shown to increase plasma antioxidant capacity in humans.

[Read more…] about A Beer a Day Keeps the Doctor Away??

Filed Under: General Nutrition, Sports Nutrition Tagged With: beer, calories, coronary artery disease, inflammation, non-alcoholic beer, nutritional value, polyphenols, protein drinks, upper respiratory tract illness, URTI

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