Philosophical Vegan Forum

Is coconut oil unethical for the same reasons palm oil is? I'd think it probably is, but I haven't ever heard discussion about it amongst vegans, and when I look up if it's unethical everything is about palm oil, or health, or something, so I'm not sure.

Thanks!

It is probably not as bad since not all palm trees produce coconuts and I've never seen or heard of deforestation to make room for Coconut palms.

Coconut oil is little else but saturated fat and saturated fat is what's so strongly linked to heart disease (not dietary cholesterol which is still contentious).
It has more saturated fat than butter! And the same fatty acids that are linked to heart disease as well.

Here's gregger for you. http://nutritionfacts.org/topics/coconut-oil/

Both should be avoided, regardless of whether or not they are ethically produced.

miniboes wrote:Both should be avoided, regardless of whether or not they are ethically produced.

Why do you write that? Coconut oil is a great vegan skin moisturizer and is good for your hair as well..

Jebus wrote:

miniboes wrote:Both should be avoided, regardless of whether or not they are ethically produced.

Why do you write that? Coconut oil is a great vegan skin moisturizer and is good for your hair as well..

True. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12715094 it shouldn't be ingested often if at all.

Jebus wrote:

miniboes wrote:Both should be avoided, regardless of whether or not they are ethically produced.

Why do you write that? Coconut oil is a great vegan skin moisturizer and is good for your hair as well..

Oh, I would not know that. When I say it should be avoided, I mean avoided in diet.

EquALLity wrote:Is coconut oil unethical for the same reasons palm oil is?

That's a great question.

The VICE article argued that it's not a good alternative, because it has a lower yield, and grows in the same places.

So, it probably would be, if everybody switched from palm oil to coconut oil. Coconut oil has a lower yield than palm oil, so it could even be worse if people got it into their heads to switch from one to the other for the same use.

At current, coconut oil supply can probably keep up with coconut oil demand reasonably well as long as we use it in moderation (coconut products in general).
Growing demand in the West may be accompanied by people in Southeast Asian countries just using less of it as it gets more expensive. Although they might also switch to palm oil instead...

But... it might also NOT be true that it only grows in the same regions as palm oil:
http://www.unctad.info/en/Infocomm/AACP ... -Coconut2/
Top Coconut Producing Countries: To my knowledge, neither India nor Mexico produce any globally significant amount of palm oil and I think both import (although they apparently do produce a little bit).

Coconut may be better on account of the larger growing region, and greater flexibility in soil types (oil palm apparently doesn't like salty or sandy soils).


This article argues (unconvincingly, for me) that coconuts are superior environmentally:
http://renewalfunds.com/blog/coconut-oil-vs-palm-oil

As it stands, I would need to see more evidence.

garrethdsouza wrote:Coconut oil is little else but saturated fat and saturated fat is what's so strongly linked to heart disease (not dietary cholesterol which is still contentious).

Dietary cholesterol increases serum cholesterol levels too, but with diminishing returns. Eat a little cholesterol, and you absorb most of it, eat a lot more cholesterol, and you don't absorb much more. So, the moral of the story is that if you're not going to eat virtually no cholesterol at all, additional dietary cholesterol doesn't make much of a difference.

I posted a graph a while back in another thread:

http://www.pcrm.org/cholesterol

garrethdsouza wrote:It has more saturated fat than butter! And the same fatty acids that are linked to heart disease as well.

It has more saturated fat than butter, but due to Lauric acid content being a substantial percentage of the saturated fat, it's less harmful than butter (but probably not by very much).

Is extra virgin olive oil our best oil option?