Health Benefits of Coconut Cream by Laura Ng

Isn't coconut cream the culprit that causes weight gain and triggers heart disease? In fact, coconut cream benefits your health more than what you've heard and learned for the past decades. So how does this wrongly-accused cream promote health?

Essentially, coconut cream benefits you with its medium-chain fatty acid (MCFA) structure and its lauric acid content. Let's first look at how its MCFA structure provides health benefits for you.

On surface, its saturated fat seems like the same as those in animal sources, but actually they're totally different. Animal-based saturated fat composes of fat molecules connected in long-chain pattern. This makes it difficult for your body to metabolize it for energy use. Hence, it gets stored in your fat storage most of the time, which explains why those who eat lots of fatty meat (from fast food) tend to grow fat easily.

On the contrary, the cream's medium-chain saturated fat gets converted into energy the moment your body absorbs it. In other words, your body converts the fat just like it does for carbohydrate. That makes coconut cream a wonderful energy provider and booster for your bodily needs.

Next, lauric acid in coconut cream benefits your health just as the lauric acid in human breast milk does for infants. It helps to improve your immune system and protects you against intrusive viruses and bacteria, including hepatitis C, herpes and even HIV!

On top of that, its anti-carcinogenic and anti-pathogenic properties helps to prevent cancer. So, by eating a reasonable amount of this creamy food, you become very well protected. By reasonable amount, I mean you take it in moderation. Eating too much of it may make you ingest too much calories for your body needs. And when excess calories not used for energy, they'll ultimately get stored into your fat cells.

So how do you eat coconut cream to reap the most health benefits? That depends on what you want to achieve with your food palate. For example, when drinking coffee, instead of adding coffee creamer or condensed milk, you can choose to use coconut cream instead. When baking cake, the cream can give you a wonderful creamy texture. How about adding it in your curry to make the gravy thick and silky? You can even cook your rice with the cream to give a subtle yet irresistible scent of coconut fragrance that no other natural foods can match.

Let your creative juices flow, but do keep in mind that moderation is the key to gaining maximum health benefits with coconut cream.