Don't let coconut fool you... | Now to Love

There are some health foods that … aren’t so healthy.

An 80g portion of fresh coconut flesh can count as one of your five a day, but, very unusually for a fruit, it’s astonishingly high in saturated fat. In fact, coconut contains even more saturated fat than whipping cream.

A typical serving of 80g supplies 283 calories and 24g of saturated fat, more than the guideline daily amount of 20g a day.

On the bright side, a high proportion of the saturated fats in coconut are medium chain triglycerides, which have the unusual benefits of increasing the amount of calories burnt off as heat — and therefore not laid down as fat. These triglycerides might not be quite as bad in terms of their artery-clogging effects as other saturated fats either, although the jury is still out on this issue.

Get it right: It’s best not to eat coconut more than once a week and when you do, stick to just a half size (40g) portion.