Picking healthy spreads and cooking oils at the grocery store can be pretty confusing especially now that there are so many to choose from. Do we go for butter? Margarine? Oil spreads? There are many different choices out there, but which is best to pick? We are comparing coconut oil and butter to see the benefits of cooking with coconut oil instead of butter.
Sales of coconut oil are rocketing, propelled by celebrity endorsements and claims that drinking the stuff will cure everything from bad breath to digestive disorders. But what about for cooking?
What is coconut oil?
Coconut oil is made from the fatty meat of matured coconuts. It is extracted and fermented until it is a pulp. It is solid at room temperature but liquid once heated.
Benefits of cooking with coconut oil:
Benefits of butter:
The Verdict?
Despite the fact that coconut oil has more saturated fat then butter it actually causes no rise in LDL levels, which was what we were expecting. This means coconut oil is actually a lot healthier for you to cook with as it contains all healthy fats. None the less it is just as calorific as butter so the main benefits of cooking with coconut oil are the improvements it makes on your immune system and mental health.
Therefore the main difference between butter and coconut oil is the fact that butter is affected by heat, light and oxygen, which destroys the beneficial fats. Whereas Coconut oil, being mainly a saturated fat, is able to withstand higher temperatures than other oils, making it one of the best oils for cooking
What is the best one to buy?
Unrefined or organic coconut oil is considered the gold standard. This is because this type of oil offers the most of the benefits listed above. It is extracted from fresh coconut using a wet-milled fermentation process that protects the beneficial properties of the coconut. This type of coconut oil has been found to have the highest antioxidant levels. This process does use heat but studies show that it does not harm the oil or reduce nutrient levels. In fact, the heat may be beneficial and create a higher quality oil.
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