If you’re anything like us you’ve been slathering coconut oil pretty much everywhere recently.
You’ve been frying with it, adding it to cake mixes, coating every strand of your hair with it, swishing it around your mouth to whiten your teeth and judiciously rubbing it into your skin.
So when we heard a Harvard professor call our new favourite oil ‘pure poision’ we were a little concerned.
Dr Karin Michels, Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard, gave a speech in German titled; ‘Coconut Oil and other Nutritional Errors’ or ‘Kokosöl und andere Ernährungsirrtümer’ that has become a viral hit on YouTube.
In the 50 minute speech, which has over 900,000 views at the time of writing, she details the dangers of overusing coconut oil. Michels called coconut oil ‘pure poison’ and named it ‘one of the worst foods you can eat’ because of its high levels of saturated fatty acids – which can clog coronary arteries.
As well as coconut oil, Michels put superfoods on her hit list – saying that they are ‘ineffective’ and we can get the same nutrients from other foods that we can find more easily, namely carrots, cherries and apricots.
“We are well and sufficiently supplied,” she said.
Michels’ previous research has been focused primarily on women’s health, she has studied the role of environmental toxins on breast cancer risk throughout life and explored the importance of a healthy diet in the prevention of cancer.
Via our sister site Grazia.
