Cooking oil reduces your risk of developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes

Pouring coconut oil in a pan

Coconut oil could help the health of overweight women, according to a recent study, as it reduces features of metabolic syndrome such as heart disease, stroke and type two diabetes. The lead investigator of the study, Dr Annie Newell-Fugate, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, said: "Substituting one tablespoon of your saturated fat calories per day with coconut oil could result in an improvement in your cardiometabolic health."

A report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that around 40 per cent of Americans are obese, with one in five suffering from metabolic syndrome. Dr Newell-Fugate added: "Our controlled experimental study suggests that coconut oil may not be bad for cardiometabolic health, contrary to what previous studies have concluded."

The research involved female mini-pigs who were fed a high-fat diet for eight months, consisting of 4,500 calories - to mimic a Western diet that contains 40 per cent or more fat. One group's food included five per cent animal lard.

The other high-fat diet group was given five per cent non-organic coconut oil instead of lard in their food. A third group of pigs consumed a low-calorie, lean diet as a control. The study discovered that the pigs that received coconut oil had lower cholesterol and blood glucose (sugar) levels compared with the pigs that ate a lard-supplemented diet.

The team found that the coconut oil group displayed less signs of fatty liver disease and had reduced abdominal fat compared to the lard-fed group. Dr Newell-Fugate remarked, "Our research suggests that coconut oil may be used with lifestyle modifications and anti-diabetic drugs to treat metabolic syndrome, at least in women with obesity."

She said that they do not yet know if the results are applicable to men. These findings can be found in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.