Does Eating Coconut Raise Your Cholesterol?
A little, and less than butter does. Coconut itself contains no cholesterol, but it is rich in saturated fat. In a meta-analysis of 16 trials, coconut oil raised LDL cholesterol by about 10 mg/dL compared with vegetable oils, and it raised HDL cholesterol too.
The bigger question is whether that LDL rise matters. Seed oils lower the LDL number, but they load LDL particles with fat that oxidizes easily. And when two large randomized trials swapped saturated fat for seed oils, cholesterol fell and deaths did not.
Does Coconut Have Cholesterol?
No. Cholesterol in food comes only from animals: meat, eggs, dairy and seafood. Coconut is a plant, so fresh coconut, dried coconut, coconut milk and coconut oil all contain zero cholesterol.
What moves your blood cholesterol more than the cholesterol in food is saturated fat, the kind of fat that is solid at room temperature. Coconut oil is one of the richest sources of saturated fat in any kitchen, more than butter by weight. Most of it is lauric acid and myristic acid, two fats found in high amounts in coconut.
So the useful question is not “does coconut have cholesterol” but “does coconut raise mine, and does that matter.”
What the Data Show
The largest pooled analysis is a meta-analysis of 16 trials in Circulation. A meta-analysis combines the results of many studies into one estimate. Compared with non-tropical vegetable oils such as olive, canola or sunflower, coconut oil raised LDL cholesterol by 10.47 mg/dL and HDL cholesterol by 4.00 mg/dL. Coconut oil did not change blood sugar, inflammation markers or body fat.
A second meta-analysis of 7 randomized trials with 515 people used stricter rules and found no significant change in LDL, but a small rise in HDL of 3.28 mg/dL. Its authors rated the certainty of that evidence as very low, because the trials were small, short and designed in different ways.
A network meta-analysis of 54 trials ranked 13 fats and oils against each other. Coconut oil ranked first of all of them for raising HDL. Butter was the reference point for LDL: every oil tested, coconut oil included, gave a lower LDL than butter did. That does not mean coconut oil lowers LDL. It raises LDL, just less than butter.
A review of 21 studies summed it up in one line: coconut oil generally raised total and LDL cholesterol more than unsaturated plant oils, but less than butter.
So on the LDL number alone, coconut oil sits in the middle, above seed oils and below butter.
Is Coconut Oil Worse Than Butter or Olive Oil?
On LDL, coconut oil raised it less than butter and about as much as olive oil in the cleanest head-to-head trial.
That was a randomized trial of 94 healthy adults aged 50 to 75. Each person ate 50 grams a day, a bit over 3 tablespoons, of extra virgin coconut oil, butter or extra virgin olive oil for 4 weeks. Butter raised LDL significantly more than either coconut oil or olive oil. Coconut oil and olive oil did not differ from each other on LDL, and coconut oil raised HDL more than both.
In a crossover trial of 25 adults with above-desirable LDL, each person ate muffins and rolls made with about 4 tablespoons of either corn oil or coconut oil every day for 4 weeks, then switched. LDL fell 2.7% on corn oil and rose 4.6% on coconut oil.
The table below adds one column the lipid trials do not measure: how much of each fat is polyunsaturated, the type that oxidizes most easily.
| Fat | Effect on LDL in trials | Effect on HDL | Polyunsaturated share (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butter | Raised it the most | Smaller rise than coconut oil | About 4% |
| Coconut oil | Raised it more than unsaturated oils, less than butter | Raised it the most | About 2% |
| Olive oil | Similar to coconut oil in one trial, lower in others | Smaller rise than coconut oil | About 10% |
| Corn, sunflower, safflower oils | Lowest LDL | Smaller rise than coconut oil | About 55 to 75% |
Why the LDL Number May Not Tell the Whole Story
Lowering LDL is only useful if it prevents heart attacks and deaths. Two randomized trials tested exactly that by replacing saturated fat with oils rich in linoleic acid, the main polyunsaturated fat in seed oils.
In the Sydney Diet Heart Study, 458 men aged 30 to 59 who had recently had a coronary event were randomized. One group replaced animal fats and common margarines with safflower oil and safflower margarine. Deaths from any cause were 17.6% in the safflower group and 11.8% in the control group. That is about 6 extra deaths for every 100 men, or roughly 1 extra death for every 17 who made the switch, a 62% higher relative risk. Deaths from heart disease were also higher, 16.3% versus 10.1%.
The Minnesota Coronary Experiment was a double-blind trial of 9,423 women and men aged 20 to 97 in six state mental hospitals and a nursing home, where the kitchen controlled what people ate. The intervention diet replaced saturated fat with corn oil and corn oil margarine. It worked on the lab number: serum cholesterol fell 13.8%, versus 1.0% on the control diet. It did not work on survival. There was no mortality benefit in the full group or in any prespecified subgroup. Among people on the corn oil diet, every 30 mg/dL drop in cholesterol went with a 22% higher risk of death. At autopsy, the corn oil group showed no less coronary artery disease and no fewer heart attacks.
Both trials sat unpublished or partly published for decades, and their full data were recovered and analyzed by NIH researchers. Pooling the linoleic acid trials, the authors found no reduction in deaths from heart disease or from any cause.
Is It the LDL Level, or What LDL Carries?
My working hypothesis is that the fat inside LDL matters as much as the amount of LDL. An LDL particle carries fatty acids from your diet. Polyunsaturated fats have chemical bonds that react easily with oxygen. Saturated fats have none of those bonds, so they barely oxidize. Oxidized LDL is the form that artery-wall immune cells take up to build plaque.
A 1993 trial in adults with mildly high cholesterol showed that diet changes what LDL carries. After 8 weeks on a diet rich in linoleic acid, LDL particles held more linoleic acid and oxidized more readily in the lab than LDL from people on an olive-oil-type diet. The more linoleic acid in a person’s LDL, the more it oxidized.
So a seed-oil diet can lower the LDL number while raising the share of that LDL that is easy to oxidize. Coconut oil does the reverse: it nudges the LDL number up, but the fat it adds to those particles is almost entirely saturated and stable. That is a hypothesis, not a settled fact, and no trial has compared coconut oil against seed oils on heart attacks. It does fit the Sydney and Minnesota results better than the idea that a lower LDL number is always better.
Does Eating Raw or Fresh Coconut Raise Cholesterol?
It may, but less is known. Fresh coconut is not the same food as coconut oil. It carries fiber, water and protein along with the fat, and a serving holds far less fat than a spoonful of oil.
In a 90-day trial of 58 healthy adults in India, people ate a set diet plus either 100 grams of fresh coconut a day or peanuts with peanut oil. The coconut diet raised both LDL and HDL significantly. The authors concluded that coconut had no harmful effect on the other markers they measured.
In an 8-week trial of 190 healthy adults in Sri Lanka, people took 30 ml of coconut oil, 30 grams of coconut kernel flakes, 30 grams of coconut milk powder, or nothing. Coconut milk lowered LDL and non-HDL cholesterol and raised HDL. Coconut oil and the kernel flakes did not produce those changes. People who started with high LDL seemed to benefit most from the coconut milk, a finding the authors said needs its own study.
Is Coconut Bad for Your Heart?
No trial has been large enough, or long enough, to show that coconut raises the risk of heart attack or stroke, and the evidence that exists does not point to harm.
The closest test was a 2-year randomized trial of 200 people with stable heart disease in Kerala, India, who cooked with either coconut oil or sunflower oil. After 2 years there was no difference in cholesterol, blood vessel function or heart events between the groups. All of these patients were on standard heart treatment, and 200 people is too few to detect modest differences in heart attacks.
In the 1981 Pukapuka and Tokelau study, the study this page was first written about, coconut was the main source of energy on two Pacific atolls: it supplied 63% of calories on Tokelau and 34% on Pukapuka. Tokelauans, who ate more coconut, had cholesterol 35 to 40 mg higher. Yet heart and blood vessel disease was uncommon on both islands, and the researchers found no evidence that the high saturated fat intake was harming them. Their diets were also low in sugar and in dietary cholesterol.
A case-control study of 282 Minangkabau people in Indonesia, another heavy coconut-eating group, found the same pattern. People with heart disease ate no more coconut flesh or coconut milk than healthy people. Meat, eggs, sugar and dietary cholesterol were the foods that tracked with heart disease.
These traditional diets were built on fish, fruit, starchy plants and hard physical work, with almost no processed food. The 2016 review warned that these findings cannot be applied directly to a typical Western diet.
Is Coconut Good for High Cholesterol?
It will not lower your LDL number, and it may nudge it up. Seed oils such as corn oil gave a lower LDL in the corn oil trial. But the Sydney and Minnesota trials showed that a lower LDL from seed oils did not mean fewer deaths.
The one LDL-lowering signal for coconut is coconut milk, which lowered LDL in the Sri Lankan trial, most of all in people with high LDL at the start. That is one self-funded trial, and it needs repeating.
Coconut oil’s rise in HDL is consistent across trials. Claims that coconut oil burns fat did not hold up: it did not change body fat measures in the 16-trial meta-analysis.
Dr. Kumar’s Take
Coconut is neither a superfood nor a poison. Coconut oil raises LDL a little, less than butter, and it raises HDL. Judged only by the LDL number, seed oils win. Judged by the randomized trials that measured deaths, the case against saturated fat falls apart: swapping it for safflower or corn oil lowered cholesterol and did not save lives, and in Sydney more men died.
I think the better question is what your LDL particles are carrying. Saturated fat is stable. Linoleic acid from seed oils is the fat most prone to oxidation, and oxidized LDL is what drives plaque. Coconut oil inside a diet low in sugar and processed food, like the Pacific islanders ate, is a very different thing from coconut oil stirred into coffee on top of a Western diet. Eat coconut as food, and pay more attention to the seed oils in processed food than to the coconut in your curry.
Practical Takeaways
- Coconut has no cholesterol. The saturated fat in it can raise your blood cholesterol a little.
- Coconut oil raises LDL about 10 mg/dL more than seed and olive oils, but less than butter, and it raises HDL.
- Lowering LDL with seed oils did not reduce deaths in the two randomized trials that replaced saturated fat with safflower or corn oil.
- Saturated fat barely oxidizes. Seed oils are rich in linoleic acid, which makes LDL particles easier to oxidize.
- Fresh coconut and coconut milk in normal cooking amounts are a smaller dose of fat than the oil, and coconut milk lowered LDL in one trial.
- Look at the whole diet. Heart disease was rare in coconut-eating islanders who ate little sugar or processed food.
Related Studies and Research
- Does Replacing Saturated Fat with Linoleic Acid Reduce Heart Disease Risk?
- Is High LDL-C Protective in the Elderly? A Review of the Evidence
- PURE Study: The Truth About Fats, Carbs, and Heart Health
- Heart Disease in India: Saturated Fat vs. Seed Oils
- Is ApoB a Better Marker of Artery Plaque Than LDL Cholesterol in Diabetes?
- LDL Cholesterol and Heart Disease: What Your Calcium Score Tells You
FAQs
Is coconut high in cholesterol?
No. Coconut contains no cholesterol at all, because cholesterol in food comes only from animals. It is high in saturated fat, which can raise the cholesterol in your blood.
Does coconut oil raise LDL cholesterol?
Yes, a little. A meta-analysis of 16 trials found coconut oil raised LDL by about 10 mg/dL versus oils like olive, canola and sunflower. It raised LDL less than butter did, and it raised HDL.
Are seed oils better than coconut oil for your heart?
They lower LDL more, but that has not translated into longer lives. In the Sydney Diet Heart Study, men who replaced saturated fat with safflower oil had more deaths, 17.6% versus 11.8%. In the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, corn oil lowered cholesterol by 13.8% with no survival benefit.
Is coconut milk bad for cholesterol?
The evidence is limited but reassuring. In one 8-week trial, 30 grams of coconut milk powder a day lowered LDL and raised HDL, while coconut oil did not. That result has not yet been repeated.
Is coconut water high in cholesterol?
No. Coconut water is the clear liquid inside a young coconut. It has no cholesterol and almost no fat.
Bottom Line
Coconut has no cholesterol, and coconut oil raises LDL a little, less than butter, while raising HDL. Seed oils lower LDL more, but the randomized trials that swapped saturated fat for seed oils lowered cholesterol without saving lives. The fat your LDL carries, stable saturated fat versus easily oxidized linoleic acid, may matter more than the LDL number itself.
