Raena Morgan: Bruce, How does coconut oil affect heart disease? Are there some studies out there, some scientific studies out there?Dr. Bruce Fife: One of the big factors of confusion with coconut oil is that people think that it promotes heart disease because of its saturated fat content.Raena Morgan: Right.Dr. Bruce Fife: Now as we discussed earlier, the saturated fat in coconut oil is different from the saturated fat in meats or in other vegetable oils. It's a medium chain fatty acid that actually protects against heart disease.If you go to populations around the world that have high coconut oil consumption, you'll find that their heart disease rates are much lower. In fact, those people with the highest coconut oil consumption have the lowest heart disease rates in the world. For example, in Sri Lanka in 1979, there was a survey that showed that every man, woman and child in the country consumed the equivalent of 120 coconuts a year. A lot of coconut oil. But in that year, they had the lowest rate of heart disease in the world. One out of every 100,000 deaths was caused by heart disease. Now, compare that to America at the same time, nearly half of the deaths were heart related and we don't eat -- hardly any coconut at all.Raena Morgan: No, we don't.Dr. Bruce Fife: Now over time, in Sri Lanka there's this anti-saturated fat campaign throughout the world. Reduce your saturated fat content. Even in Sri Lanka, in the coconut regions, they started to reduce their saturated fat and so coconut oil came down and a very interesting thing happened. They replaced their coconut oil with polyunsaturated vegetable oils and margarine and things. And as coconut oil consumption came down, heart disease went up -- just the opposite of what they thought would happen.Raena Morgan: It was that apparent?Dr. Bruce Fife: It was that apparent. In the coconut growing regions of India the same thing happened. They were told to stop eating coconut oil because it's a saturated fat. Within 10 years the heart disease rate tripled.Raena Morgan: And, those are scientific studies?Dr. Bruce Fife: Right. These were studies, published studies.Raena Morgan: Plus you're dealing with people's cultures too. So, they were told something that they were eating was unhealthy and then they became unhealthier by changing their diet.Dr. Bruce Fife: Right. Most of the heart disease cases in these coconut growing countries come from the cities where people eat the least amount of coconut oil because they eat the imported oils. Now when you go outside the cities into the villages that still rely on coconut oil as their primary source of dietary fat, heart disease is either rare or non-existent, even though that's the oil they eat predominantly in their diet. They've done studies on these people, and even the people, the oldest people of the population live to be nearly 100 years old, who have been eating coconut oil almost everyday of their lives. They studied these people and they had no evidence of heart disease. They do not have high blood pressure. They have no clogging in their arteries, yet they've been eating coconut oil for nearly 100 years and it has caused them no problem whatsoever.Raena Morgan: Thank you Bruce.