[Longblades]

Originally Posted by AnneCS

I would err on the side of caution with this--especially the ingestion of coconut oil... it seems to be another cure-everything fad (huge red flag imo), heavily promoted by the health food industry, but lacking evidence aside from a flood of anecdotes. Where are the solid studies and research to back it all up?

Actually, here's a scary little bit from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_fats_and_oils
"However, palm oil and coconut oil, even as unhydrogenated "natural" oils, are high in saturated fatty acids (lauric and myristic acid) that have demonstrated negative effects upon plasma cholesterol and cardiovascular risk factors.[19][20][21][22][23] In fact, they are commonly used in animal studies to induce atherosclerosis to investigate the possible causes of the disease[24][25][26][27][28]"

Eek?!

I think it's important (for both ourselves and our pets) to work on overall health and have a varied diet of foods that are proven to be nutritious rather than to rely on one food or ingredient to make you (magically?) healthy and cure you of a bunch of ailments.

For now, I will rub it on my skin and hair on occasion and stick with my olive oil diet.

I wondered about this too. Isn't coconut oil one of the particularly bad ones in human diet? Could it be as bad for our pets as for us?