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A New Look at Coconut Oil – Part 10

Friday, March 22, 2024 12:03 PM

Article by MARY ENIG, PHD 
January 2, 2000

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/know-your-fats/a-new-look-at-coconut-oil/#gsc.tab=0 

Health and Nutritional Benefits from Coconut Oil: An Important Functional Food for the 21st Century

Presented at the AVOC Lauric Oils Symposium, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, 25 April 1996

Lauric Acid in Foods?

The coconut producing countries

Whole coconut as well as extracted coconut oil has been a mainstay in the food supply in many countries in parts of Asia and the Pacific Rim throughout the centuries. Recently though, there has been some replacement of coconut oil by other seed oils. This is unfortunate since the benefits gained from consuming an adequate amount of coconut oil are being lost. 

Based on the per capita intake of coconut oil in 1985 as reported by Kaunitz (1992), the per capita daily intake of lauric acid can be approximated. For those major producing countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, and consuming countries such as Singapore, the daily intakes of lauric acid were approximately 7.3 grams (Philippines), 4.9 grams (Sri Lanka), 4.7 grams (Indonesia), and 2.8 grams (Singapore). In India, intake of lauric acid from coconut oil in the coconut growing areas (e.g., Kerala) range from about 12 to 20 grams per day (Eraly 1995), whereas the average for the rest of the country is less than half a gram. An average high of approximately 68 grams of lauric acid is calculated from the coconut oil intake previously reported by Prior et al (1981) for the Tokelau Islands. Other coconut producing countries may also have intakes of lauric acid in the same range.

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