Coconut Oil vs Vegetable Oil: Which Is Less Inflammatory?

Coconut oil is less inflammatory than vegetable oil, by two points: coconut oil sits in the middle of the inflammation scale and vegetable oil near the top. Both go into a hot pan for roasting and frying, so the comparison is a fair one, and neither belongs in your cooking every day.

Coconut oil is around 85% saturated fat, more than butter and more than lard, and used in place of olive oil it pushes up the cholesterol that collects in artery walls. It earns its middle score on stability: its fat holds together at high temperature instead of breaking apart the way delicate oils do, so frying with it creates far fewer of the harmful by-products. Virgin coconut oil also keeps a small share of the coconut’s own plant compounds, which the refined, bleached kind has lost.

On paper, vegetable oil looks like the better bottle of the two: mostly unsaturated fat, a little vitamin E, and rapeseed blends bring some alpha-linolenic acid, a plant omega-3. The score follows what happens to it in practice. Refining cuts those plant compounds down to a trace before the bottle reaches the shelf, and nearly all of this oil is eaten as fried food, the form most clearly tied to higher inflammation. Keep coconut oil for the few dishes whose flavour suits it, cook the rest in olive oil, and if you do buy coconut oil, buy the virgin one.