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SALT LAKE CITY — Many families are using coconut oil as an alternative fat for cooking or even in their beauty routines.
Many families are making the switch in an attempt to stay healthy. It's for things like sautéing vegetables, substituting butter and even for taking off eye makeup.
"Coconut oil is a big thing these days," dietician Trish Brimhall said. "If you take a look at any grocery store you'll find a large selection."
At the stores you'll find refined and unrefined, sometimes called virgin or extra virgin, coconut oil. Brimhall said the difference between the two is the unrefined coconut oil is made from the fresh fruit of the coconut.
"With the one that's refined, it's processed a different way," she said. "They use some chemicals. They do it from a dry, bleached coconut so you don't have quite the same health benefits and antioxidant properties you would get from an extra virgin."
Even though it's called coconut oil, technically it is a fat like butter because it is solid at room temperature. Unlike butter, coconut oil has a great shelf life and will keep in a pantry for more than a year.
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KSL's Brooke Walker had dinner with a local Utah family to check up on the amount of veggies the family was serving. She brought along dietician Kathleen Nielsen to give her two cents.A search on Pinterest for coconut oil will bring up hundreds of recipes, tips on how to use it as a beauty product — there are even claims that it can treat diabetes and Alzheimer's.
"It is not a cure-all for alzheimer's or diabetes," Brimhall said. "You will find a lot of information out there that says it is a superfood or a magic elixir or an amazing cure-all. I would always be very wary when it says, ‘super' or ‘magic'. It's not going to be a magic cure-all for any kind of disease condition."
No studies have conclusively proven coconut oil will help you lose weight or boost energy levels so far, she said.
"(The) bottom line is, it's got some interesting health benefits that we still need to look into some further research. But it's a great product to use if you want to switch it out for some of your solid fats and use in places where you don't mind some of that nice coconut essence," Brimhall said.
