Don't be faked out by diet claims

It's the last 10 seconds of the game. The Cavaliers are up by one point. LeBron James fakes to his left. Kobe Bryant jumps to block his shot. But then James drives to the right and scores the winning basket.

That's a classic head fake: Somebody makes you think one thing is happening when just the opposite is true.

Head fakes don't just take place on the basketball court. They occur in real life, too.

Take coconut oil. It's loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and oozing with calories (117 per tablespoon, to be exact). But the buzz on the street is that it's a natural miracle food that can melt off unwanted weight, lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system, fight heart disease and fend off cancer — without the artery-clogging effects of other high-sat-fat foods such as beef, cream and cheese.

No wonder books on the stuff are flying off the shelves. Heck, even celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston and British rugby squads are reported to swear by it.

How did coconut oil suddenly get so popular? Once trans fats were exposed as the nutritional bad boys they are, food manufacturers started turning to tropical oils like coconut and palm oil to take their place. These plant oils have many of the same qualities that made trans fats so good at preserving the shelf life and flavor of processed foods. So naturally, the food industry (not to mention the diet book industry) would like us to think they're healthy.

But don't be fooled. Plant-based or not, both of these oils are loaded with saturated fat, and coconut oil is the all-star: It has more saturated fat than pretty much any food out there. How much? A mind-boggling 87 percent. Compare that with 63 percent in butter or 38 percent in a burger, and you get the picture.

OK, yes, there's still somescientific debate about whether the type of saturated fat in coconut oil raises cholesterol as much as that found in animal foods, but even if it doesn't, there's plenty of proof that sat fat's a major health hazard in lots of other ways.

For one thing, all sat fat speeds up aging. It does this by turning on a potentially harmful family of genes that we docs call RAS genes. They tell your body to churn out inflammatory proteins that cause heart disease, stroke, wrinkles, impotence and immune system slip-ups.

Feeling older yet? Well, we're just getting started. Sat fat doesn't do pretty things for your memory, either. It decreases a chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is responsible for recall and learning. It also increases inflammation in the brain.

When researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina fed rats a diet enriched with either coconut oil or soybean oil, the rats who scarfed down the chow laced with coconut oil not only developed more inflammation in their gray matter, but they also made more mistakes on memory tests. Now, you're not a rat in our opinion (no looking at your cubicle-mate!). But your body acts like one in food companies' experiments to market these aging oils to you.

No surprise, as many studies reveal the ugly secret that if you feast on foods rich in saturated fat you are much more likely to develop dementia. Period, exclamation point. Good head fake, eh? But that's not all (although it's enough for us!): Sat fat predisposes you to, or causes, insulin resistance, which eventually means diabetes and heart disease.

Bottom line: Don't fall for the coconut oil head fake any more than you would (you hope) if you were trying to guard LeBron. Otherwise, before you know it, you could be a walking advertisement for Viagra or Botox or cardiac bypass.

In terms of fats, the way to go if you want to resemble Jennifer Aniston or a rugged rugby player is to focus on the proven anti-agers: the monounsaturated fats found in nuts, avocados and olive oil, and the omega-3 fats in flaxseed, walnuts, canola oil and fish such as cod, halibut and trout. Winners, all.

The YOU Docs, Mike Roizen and Mehmet Oz, are authors of the "YOU: Being Beautiful: The Owner's Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty." To submit questions and find ways to grow younger and healthier, go to www.RealAge.com, the docs' online home. Distributed by King Feat