On the Mythical Properties of Coconut Oil

My dear wife has the book, Eat Fat, Lose Fat, by nutritionist Mary Eng and Sally Fallon. This book advocates oil-centric diets with scientific-seeming arguments about the benefits of coconut oil. It reads like faddish pseudoscience to me, although I think it is well established that Atkin's like high fat diets do lead to weight loss -- although at the expense other negative health effects.

Coconut oil, while a saturated fat, is made from shorter chain fatty acids, and it is more easily metabolized by the liver than longer fatty acids, most especially palmitic or oleic.

I think that the widespread negative opinion of coconut oil was informed by data like the fatty acid source table at the bottom of this post. That table that lumped all saturated acids shorter than C-16 together. That table certainly makes coconut oil seem awful. Learning that there are more medium length oils reopens the topic.

There is a very sensible article on coconut oil by Craig Hassel on the University of Minnesota website. He addresses the coconut oil fad, and concludes that it is not as bad as people thought a decade ago. While coconut oil contains 60% medium fatty acids of C-12 or less, it also contains 40% palmitic and myristic acids which are known to increase blood cholesterol. His point about the health effect of coconut oil, that it depends the other food which coconut oil displaced in the diet. If one replaces butterfat with coconut oil, great. If one replaces olive oil, then the effect on cholesterol will be negative.

This conclusion avoids the discussion of the secondary medical benefits of the acids, most specifically caprylic and lauric. I need to read up on that further. Caprylic is only present at 12% though. My intuition is that caprylic acid may be more medicinal than other fatty acids, and that it should be used with care: in controlled amounts.


Source:

Table of Fatty Acids
Acid Name	Structure	Melt Point	Graphic	Chime
SATURATED
Lauric	CH3(CH2)10COOH	+44	Graphic	Chime
Palmitic	CH3(CH2)14COOH	+63	.	Chime
Stearic	CH3(CH2)16COOH	+70	Graphic	Chime
UNSATURATED
Oleic	CH3(CH2)7CH=CH(CH2)7COOH	+16	Graphic	Chime
Linoleic	CH3(CH2)4(CH=CHCH2)2(CH2)6COOH	-5	Graphic	Chime
Linolenic	CH3CH2(CH=CHCH2)3(CH2)6COOH	-11		Chime
Arachi- donic	CH3(CH2)4(CH=CHCH2)4(CH2)2COOH	-50	Graphic	Chime

Data from: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/551fattyacids.html

Below is an even better table:

.		fatty acid percentage in oil
Seeds		Polyunsaturated			Monounsaturated	Saturated
Name	Fat Content in seed (%)	LNA 18:3w3 (%)	LA 18:2w6 (%)	LNA+LA w3+w6 (%)	18:1w9 (%)	18:0 (%)	16:0 (%)	Total (%)
hemp	35	20	60*	80	12	2	6	8
chia	30	30	40	70	-	-	-	-
kukui	30	29	40	69	-	-	-	-
flax	35	58	14	72	19	4	5	9
pumpkin	46.7	0-15	42-57	57	34	0	9	9
soybean	17.7	7	50	57	26	6	9	15
walnut	60	5	51	56	28	5	11	16
wheat germ	10.9	5	50	55	25	18	0	18
evening primrose	17	-	81**	81	11	2	6	8
safflower	59.5	-	75	75	13	12	-	12
sunflower	47.3	-	65	65	23	12	-	12
grape	20	-	71	71	17	12	-	12
corn	4	-	59	59	24	17	-	17
sesame	49.1	-	45	45	42	13	-	13
rice bran	10	1	35	36	48	17	-	17
cottonseed	40	-	50	50	21	25	-	25
rape(canola)	30	7	30	37	54***	7	-	7
peanut	47.5	-	29	29	47	18	-	18
almond	54.2	-	17	17	78	5	-	5
olive	20	-	8	8	75	16	-	16
avocado	12	-	10	10	70	20	-	20
coconut	35.3	-	3	3	6	0	91	91
palm kernel	35.3	-	2	2	13	0	85	85
beech	50	-	32	32	54	8	-	8
brazil	66.9	-	24	24	48	24	-	24
pecan	71.2	-	20	20	63	7	-	7
pistachio	53.7	-	19	19	65	9	-	9
hickory	68.7	-	17	17	68	9	-	9
filbert	62.4	-	16	16	54	5	-	5
macadamia	71.6	-	10	10	71	12	-	12
cashew	41.7	-	6	6	70	18	-	18
neem	40	1	20	21	41	20	-	20

* Includes up to 2% GLA - Gamma Linolenic Acid

** Includes 9% GLA

*** Includes up to 5%erucic acid

* Includes up to 2% GLA -
Gamma Linolenic Acid

** Includes 9% GLA

*** Includes up to 5%erucic acid

Clean Coal Technology

It is easy to confuse the publicity with the reality. There is no clean coal plant today, but one could be built. Syngas made from coal would be far cleaner than simply burning coal, and there would be no fly-ash. (Actually there are a few plants --see this later post for clarification.)

I was annoyed to see "Exposing the Myth of Clean Coal Technology" on Time.com today. Bryan Walsh, the author, seemed to confuse the actual clean coal technology with putting scrubbers on a conventional plant.

Syngas made from coal, or coal gasification plants would make power as clean as we have a desire to make it. It would provide an easy way to separate carbon dioxide -- although someone has to solve the problem of where to put the enormous amounts of carbon dioxide involved. The diagram below, which is far too complex, shows the process. One can take any carbohydrate feedstock, bake it at high temperature without oxygen, and gasify it. One can burn the resulting gas like natural gas, or one can separate out the carbon dioxide first. One could also separate out all the hydrogen, and use it to make electricity in a fuel cell.

You can find more information on gasification on the DOE website. Although there is one gapping error on the site: they claim there are commercial plants, and there simply are not commercial plants for power production. There are some much smaller plants owned by Sasol in South Africa and some owned by Eastman Chemical in Tennessee. There were also power plants during World War II, and in South Africa during its embargos, but there is no production for power today.




The advantage of gasification of coal is that the carbon dioxide could be separated prior to burning the fuel. Once coal is gasified, it is a better fuel than natural gas.

There are many problems with coal gasification, but it is the real clean coal technology -- not putting scrubbers on a coal burning plant. The chief problem is a large-scale plant built so we can assess the technology. Someone needs to build the first one.

!!-See my new post Coal Gasification-!!

iPod Touch in a Prius

As the snow gets deeper in Southgate, I decided to make my iPod Touch play in my car, which is a 2006 Prius. The iPod touch uses the same plug interface as the older iPods. I had hooked it up using a box from Dice Electronics



The older Dice Model that I had did not work correctly with the iPod Touch. More specifically you had to reset switches on the case to disable the higher functionality. Before the Prius could control the iPod, but now it cannot.

A fellow named Chris Dragon wrote a nice illustrated installation guide. I used this on my three hour trek to open up the dash and close it up again.

This went pretty well despite the low temperatures in the garage. None of these adventures goes according to plan. A one point I had the whole dash buttoned up, and I plugged the iPod in and it did NOT work. Well, it only took thirty minutes to getting running. I suppose I am getting better at it.

Having said that, there is a crazy video of someone disassembling a Prius Dashboard in FIVE minutes. This guy is pretty speedy. The Prius seems to be designed more for speedy assembly than for speedy disassembly in my eye.

21% Poorer

I spent New Year's Day 2009 figuring out that I am 21% poorer than I was on New Year's Day in 2008.

This depressing fact is actually better than focusing on the magnitude of my 401k decrease, 42%.

It is nice that my house only went down 17% in value. Ironically it is keeping the value of my portfolio up. :-(

I find little comfort from commentators like William Bernstein that I have just as much stock as I did before. If I don't sell, it what difference does it make what the value of it is? That is not the point. I could have done better. Eeek! what if next year is as bad as this one?

I still think that a well diversified portfolio is the way to go, coupled with rebalancing. Right now rebalancing says to perversely sell bonds to buy stock -- especially foreign stock. That is hard to do, but that is where the gains will be on the rebound.

And I am expecting, or is that just hoping, for a rebound.

It is nice to see that the January 2 market results are up. We can always hope for better in 2009. There does not seem to be any news driving it, but what Adam Smith called the "Animal Spirits" of the investors ( and/or savers, speculators and ponzi scheme operators.)