Why is Coconut Oil Good For You and Its Uses

open coconut

Coconut oil is good for you.  It is more easily digested by the body than other vegetable oils.  It has good fatty acids and vitamins, like Vitamin E, Choline and Vitamin K (which is good for healthy bones and is a vitamin needed to make your blood clot - a good thing).

Why is Coconut oil good for you?

Coconut oil has medium chain fatty acids (MCFA’s).  These fatty acids are more water soluble and more easily digested by the body than the long chain fatty acids (LCFA’s) found in other vegetable oils.  This is because they don‘t require bile to break them down, enter the bloodstream quicker and go to the liver faster where they are used as an immediate source of energy.  Also, less MCFA’s are converted into fat than LCFA’s.



What is a Medium Chain Fatty Acid and a Medium Chain Triglyceride?

Fats in food are composed of fat molecules called fatty acids, which are grouped in a structure call a triglyceride which has 3 fatty acids linked with a glycerol carbon atom.

Triglycerides and fatty acids are both classified as saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. Plus they have a further classification on whether the fatty acid chain of carbon atoms are short, medium or long.

So there are short chain fatty acids (SCFA) and short chain triglycerides (SCT), medium chain fatty acids (MCFA) and medium chain triglycerides (MCT), and long chain fatty acids (LCFA) and long chain triglycerides (LCT).

Cookware Varieties and Safety Issues

When it comes to cooking, who ever thought that there would be so many decisions to make on what type of cookware to use!  There are many varieties available to choose from.   There are different sizes and shapes, different non-stick capabilities, some have better heat distribution than others, and other characteristics as well.  But, did you know that many pans can leach potentially dangerous contaminants into our food?   So safety is something that we should be aware of when choosing cookware.   In this article, I've listed some of the things that you should keep in mind before purchasing new pans.      

Here are the choices available:    

1) Teflon coated pans :  These pans are coated with a non-stick "Teflon" coating.