gregwar wrote:my folks swear by coconut oil for cooking and other health benefits.
Coconut oil is a funny thing. In the 1980s and 1990s this was involved in a "this is extremely bad for you" scare stories over movie popcorn and other processed junk food.

Now, for some reason, there is a lot of articles promoting coconut oil as a cure-all for everything... just a ton of click bait on "10 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD USE COCONUT OIL NOW!" including, funnily enough for a calorie-dense fatty oil, weight loss. Coconut oil is a vegan friendly spreadable fat (eg a butter substitute), and I think that led it to being popular with certain parts of the Whole Foods crowd. I don't know if one has to do with the other... it might...
It's just fat. Coconut oil has high saturated fat content, so it's probably best to not use it in excess. But I can say that about everything, really. It does have a nice flavor, which is a better reason to use it than any clickbaity pseudoscience.