Coconut Oil...

In recent years a growing emphasis has been placed on the importance of Coconut Oil and its use in cooking, cleaning, and other health applications. Some of the main arguments I've heard for it can largely be summed up in this article for "10 Great Reason You Should Be Using Coconut Oil!"

I took the liberty to read through it and to their credit they gave at least some sort of benefit and why for each statement; but...

They didn't bother to provide any links to the research that they referenced.

Saturated Fat

Don't get me wrong, I think coconut oil tastes wonderful. The other day we received a plate of cookies that we were told were lovingly made with coconut oil instead of shortening. They tasted FANTASTIC. Which doesn't surprise me all that much; if you were to look at a chart of oils and how saturated they were, you'd find that coconut oil is one of the highest on the list for saturated fats. It also is exactly how I think coconut oil should be used in a "healthy sense" - a great substitute for shortening.

Common Oils and their properties

If you took the time to look at the chart above (which I hope you did) you probably noticed coconut oil there at the bottom being over 80% of Saturated Fat. I was tempted to place other charts on there that just blatantly said whether the fat was good or bad, but in case you are new as to which fats are good for you and which are not... Saturated Fats are bad (Trans Fats are even worse).
So when I first start hearing about how good coconut oil is supposed to be for you, I immediately begin to think of this.

Healthy Oils

Lets review a few quick tips for how to determine the likely health of an oil just by looking at it - it's really quite simple.
If the oil is liquid at room temperature it has less saturated fats. If the oil is solid at room temperature it has more saturated fats. Also the more clear the oil the less saturated fats it has.
Ex) Olive Oil is liquid at room temperature and is more clear. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature and completely opaque.
You can get an idea then that because of the nature of these oils, unsaturated fats will melt more easily, becoming more "pliable" when warm. When they are inside your body these fats move a lot easier and they even have room in their chemical makeup to pick up some of those bad cholesterols lying around (LDLs).

Cooking With Oils

One of the most common reasons I've heard for using coconut oil is that it cooks really well in high temperatures and thus avoids creating trans-fats in your cooking (this also happens to be reason number eight on the link I posted for 10 great reasons to use coconut oil). I wondered if the temperatures that we actually cook at would produce trans-fats or if this was just further marketing to promote the use of coconut oil. So I did a little digging and found a wealth of information on the internet concerning the topic. Lo and behold the articles which I will provide references for not only confirmed my suspicion but further upheld my argument against coconut oils. I encourage you to take the time to read over these two articles I've chosen as the most concise and helpful in learning about oils and health in general; there's even a few other nuggets of information you will learn about good health. For example, did you know that nutrition label facts can state 0 grams of trans fat if the food product contains less than .5 grams of trans fat per serving. And do you know who can set the serving sizes? I'll tell you, the food company sets the serving size. So just change the serving size to something that has less than .5 grams of trans fat and now you can report that it has 0. Article 2 explains further on how to tell if a food might still contain trans fats.
Article 1
Article 2
But to paraphrase; in a domestic kitchen you will not be cooking at temperatures and pressures high enough to create trans fats. If you are still worried, then they recommend to try an oil with a high smoke point (so as to avoid weird flavors) such as rapeseed oil, peanut oil, or sunflower oil.

Summary

I'll finish my rant now, but I hope that this has helped you become a wiser consumer of information. I will let you do the rest of the research on the article I mentioned earlier in this rant and its claims on health benefits for using coconut oil. But sufficeth to say, that I don't really believe many if any of them (except for the last one, coconut oil does make delicious desserts).