One finding that really puts this into perspective was that there was no difference when it came to comparing coconut oil with oils saturated in fat such as butter and beef fat. In fact, coconut oil is actually so high in saturated fat (82% of the fat in it is saturated) that it far outweighs pork lard (39%), butter (63%) and beef fat (50%).
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The Center for Disease Control reports that nearly 32% of Americans have high LDL cholesterol and for those people, the AHA recommends consuming no more than 6% saturated fat as part of their daily caloric intake.
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Naturally with these findings, their latest warning to prevent high cholesterol is against coconut oil.
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“Because coconut oil increases LDL cholesterol, a cause of CVD [cardiovascular disease], and has no known offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil,” the American Heart Association said in the Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease advisory.
Coconut oil has been considered a healthy alternative recently — so this finding will drastically change it’s perception. The study mentions a recent public survey of Americans, reporting that 72% of them believe coconut oil is considered healthy. They compared those findings with nutritionists, of which only 37% believed that to be true.