Does Coconut Oil Clog Arteries?

No. Coconut oil does not clog arteries. Just because it contains 92% saturated fat doesn't mean coconut oil will clog arteries.

By the way, do you know how an artery gets clogged?

Free radicals can attack and injure the inner wall of an artery. When a damage to the artery takes place, our body will send "paramedics" such as scar tissue, platelets, calcium, cholesterol and triglycerides to the wounded site to try to heal the injury.

As you can see, it is the mixture of these components that clump together to form a plaque that may clog arteries if the injury persists, not just cholesterol alone. For your info, some plaques that clog arteries actually contain little or no cholesterol but pretty much unsaturated fats.

Unsaturated fat can actually appear more deadly than saturated fat because unsaturated fat oxidizes easily and promotes free radical activity whereas saturated fat does not stick on the arteries like unsaturated fat does because saturated fat doesn't oxidize easily and thus doesn't promote free radical damage.

So, does that mean saturated fats are good to eat because they don't clog arteries?

Saturated fats in coconut oil are good to eat, but not those from animal meat because all saturated fats from animal meat belong to the long-chain fatty acid group which are not easily broken down and converted to energy, and because of that, they convert easily to cholesterol instead.

That's the reason why meat-eaters tend to have high cholesterol levels that may increase their risk of heart disease. And when they cook meat with dietary oils such as corn oil, peanut oil, safflower oil or soybean oil etc that contain primarily unsaturated fats, their risk of heart disease shoots up.

Another bad thing about eating animal meat is the increase of homocysteine levels which can elevate your risk of heart disease to a whole new level.

On the contrary, most saturated fats in coconut oil convert to energy quickly due to their shorter length of fatty acids (I.e. medium-chain fatty acids). Even though there are still some percentage of long-chain saturated fats in coconut oil that may convert to cholesterol and 8% of unsaturated fats that may promote oxidation, coconut oil's medium-chain saturated fats can help burn them off before they contribute to plaque formation and clog arteries.

For these reasons, coconut oil does not clog arteries.

To conclude, if you don't want your arteries to get clogged, replace the cooking oil in your kitchen with coconut oil now. And cut back on your meat intake if you want heart disease to stay away from you.