Some Experts Dispute AHA Warning on Saturated Fats, Coconut Oil

In the wake of the American Heart Association’s warn­ing about the sat­u­rated fat con­tent of coconut oil, some experts have weighed in and found the health orga­ni­za­tion’s study want­ing.

The AHA released a Presidential Advisory stat­ing coconut oil con­tained more sat­u­rated fat than but­ter and beef fat. It also rec­om­mended sat­u­rated fat intake should be lim­ited in order to avoid rais­ing ​“bad” cho­les­terol lev­els and pre­vent clogged arter­ies and heart-related con­di­tions.

Critics ques­tion the AHA’s method­ol­ogy in find­ing these con­clu­sions.

Fabian Dayrit, pres­i­dent of the Integrated Chemists of the Philippines, pub­lished an arti­cle stat­ing there are ​“exper­i­men­tal errors and biases” in the study on which the AHA based its rec­om­men­da­tions. ​“Defective exper­i­ments have led to defec­tive guide­lines,” he said.

“To decrease sat­u­rated fat effec­tively means an increase in unsat­u­rated fat in the diet. The actual result has been an increase in omega‑6 fats and a high omega‑6 to omega‑3 fat ratio. This unhealthy ratio has been linked to heart dis­ease, the very dis­ease that the AHA wants to tar­get, as well as can­cer and inflam­ma­tory dis­eases.”

Dayrit, who is also chair­man of Asian and Pacific Coconut Community’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Health, said the warn­ings against sat­u­rated fats were based on stud­ies by Ancel Keys in the 1950s.

“The Keys hypoth­e­sis, gen­er­ally known as the sat­u­rated fat-cho­les­terol-heart dis­ease hypoth­e­sis, states that sat­u­rated fats raise serum cho­les­terol which in turn increases the risk for heart dis­ease,” he said.

He added that Keys used hydro­genated coconut oil in one of his stud­ies.

“The use of hydro­genated fats in this feed­ing study casts doubt on the valid­ity of the con­clu­sions of this work regard­ing the effects of coconut oil,” Dayrit said. ​“It was already known in the 1920s that hydro­gena­tion of veg­etable oils pro­duced trans fats. In 1957, the same year when both Keys papers came out, it was reported that trans fats were deposited in var­i­ous human tis­sues, such as adi­pose tis­sues, liver, aor­tic tis­sue, and atheroma of those who died of ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis. In a 1961 paper on hydro­genated fats, Keys him­self noted that hydro­genated oils raised serum cho­les­terol and triglyc­erides. Therefore, the increase in serum cho­les­terol that Keys observed may have been due to the trans fats in mar­garine and hydro­genated coconut oil and this would make his con­clu­sions invalid.”

Gary Taubes, an award-win­ning sci­ence writer, took the AHA to task over its appar­ently selec­tive use of source mate­r­ial.

“It’s cherry pick­ing, and it’s how a lawyer builds an argu­ment but not how a sci­en­tist works to estab­lish reli­able knowl­edge, which is the goal of the enter­prise,” he wrote in an opin­ion piece.

Taubes, who has authored books such as Good Calories, Bad Calories, Why We Get Fat and The Case Against Sugar, charges the AHA with dis­re­gard­ing stud­ies that don’t sup­port its stance against the use of sat­u­rated fats.

“The AHA con­cludes that only four clin­i­cal tri­als have ever been done with suf­fi­ciently reli­able method­ol­ogy to allow them to assess the value of replac­ing sat­u­rated fatty acids with polyun­sat­u­rated fatty acids and con­cludes that this replace­ment will reduce heart attacks by 30 per­cent,” he said. ​“These four tri­als are the ones that are left after the AHA experts have sys­tem­at­i­cally picked through the oth­ers and found rea­sons to reject all that didn’t find such a large pos­i­tive effect, includ­ing a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber that hap­pened to sug­gest the oppo­site.”

Taubes adds the AHA ignores results from some of the biggest stud­ies ever con­ducted, includ­ing the Minnesota Coronary Survey, the Sydney Heart Study and the Women’s Health Initiative.

“Whether con­sciously or uncon­sciously, they assume that what they think is true surely is, and then they method­i­cally elim­i­nate the neg­a­tive and accen­tu­ate the pos­i­tive until they can make the case that they are surely, clearly and unequiv­o­cally right.”

Anthony Pearson, a car­di­ol­o­gist at St. Lukes of Chesterfield hos­pi­tal in St. Louis, argued in a post on his blog that the AHA’s rec­om­men­da­tions are flawed because not all fatty acids are cre­ated equal.

“The kinds of sat­u­rated fats in coconut oil dif­fers markedly from both dairy sat­u­rated fatty acids and beef sat­u­rated fatty acids. Some sat­u­rated fatty acids may have ben­e­fi­cial effects on blood lipids, weight, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar health,” he said. ​“The types of unsat­u­rated fatty acids in veg­etable oils dif­fer markedly and may have dif­fer­en­tial effects on car­dio­vas­cu­lar health.”

He added: ​“Although con­tain­ing lots of sat­u­rated fat, the sat­u­rated fatty acids in coconut oil are dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent from other dietary sources of sat­u­rated fatty acids The medium-chain fatty acids like lau­ric acid, which make up the coconut, are absorbed and metab­o­lized dif­fer­ently from long-chain fatty acids found in ani­mal fat,” Pearson wrote.

• Integrated Chemists of the Philippines


• Gary Taubes


• The Skeptical Cardiologist