This new type of research is called qualitative research in contrast to the quantitative research of the conventional science. Qualitative research is used in all social sciences and it should come to medicine in a big way for us to understand human biology, the latter is governed mainly by the human mind. The ramifications of the human mind can never be assessed correctly by the reductionist science and the quantitative research. The use of coconut oil by our ancestors was the result of the observational qualitative research for thousands of years.

The confusion created by this kind of propaganda has made the literate population get scared of using coconut oil in diet. Let us look at this story in a very scientific way. It is true that excessive use of dietary fat is very bad for human health. It is also true that fat is very essential for human health as all the cell walls are made up of fat and a few million cells are replaced every day in the body. The best way of taking fat is to restrict the total calorie intake of fat to be restricted to about 12% of the daily requirement and not more. If one avoids fat totally one gets into problems much more serious than having more fat in the blood.

Coconut oil is rich in saturated fat, and that is why it is bracketed with animal fat by many people. It should be noted that coconut oil has no cholesterol as the latter is a component of animal fat only. However intake of saturated fat may result in elevation of the blood cholesterol levels. All oils are not the same. Coconut oil is very good food as most of its saturated fatty acids are what we call medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs) They account for nearly 64% of the fatty acids in coconut oil. It is only coconut oil and palm kernel oil, among all the edible oils, that contain these good MCFAs. All other vegetable oils and the animal oils contain what we call long chain fatty acids ( more than 12 carbon atoms ). Both the saturated and the unsaturated fatty acids in all these oils contain long chain fatty acids ( LCFAs ). The only exception is butter fat with 12% of fatty acids being short chain ones. Unfortunately those who equate coconut oil with other saturated fats do not know that saturated fats have different varieties as described above. Coconut oils is ,therefore, different from all other oils containing saturated fatty acids.

Coconut oil being a MCFAs oil has certain definite advantages over other LCFAs. The digestion of coconut oils is faster and starts almost in the mouth itself and undergoes complete digestion in the stomach and upper intestine not requiring the pancreatic juice lipase for its digestion. It is also better solubility in biological fluids. It gets absorbed directly into the portal blood and is carried to the liver directly to undergo rapid oxidation to release energy. Other oils and animal fats containing LCFAs need the pancreatic lipase for their digestion and they are not that easily mixing with biological fluids and so are absorbed after being re-esterified inside the intestinal cells into triglycerides. They are first incorporated into the large insoluble particles called chylomicrons by the intestinal cells. These then go to the liver via the lymphatics and the systemic circulation, thereby going round all parts of the body before going to the liver for final oxidation. They are , therefore, more likely to get deposited as fats and also change the blood fat content. Coconut oil, therefore, does not produce any significant change in the circulating VLDL, supposed to be very bad for vessel thickening, the dreaded atherosclerosis.

Because of the above advantages coconut oil is preferred as medicinal oil in cooking for people who have bad digestion and also in infant feeds to supply fat content. Addition of coconut oil to infant feeds helps absorption of calcium and magnesium and could help treat rickets in poor nations of the world . Another distinct feature of coconut oil is that it has 2.56 % less calories per gramme of fat compared to all other oils having LCFAs.

The only disadvantage of coconut oil as the sole supply of daily fat need is the poor levels of essential fatty acids in coconut oil. But since our staple food contains cereals, pulses, roots, tubers and also fish enough and more of essential fatty acids are supplied in our daily ration. If one is taking the usual balanced diet of 2400 Kcalories we need only as low as 72 Kcal of essential fatty acids, which is more than met by other foods mentioned above.

What the common man does not know is that the use of the new artificial oils, claiming to have a high content of polyunsaturated fats are bad for health as they produce large amounts of oxidants in the body which eventually make the cells age faster and also die, in the absence of a large supply of vitamin E. Most polyunsaturated oils are supplied to the consumer as hydrogenated form to avoid rancidity and that gives the oil the bad effects on the body. It is now known that butter is safer than margarine.