Canola oil is the better choice for everyday cooking and overall health. It has a far more favorable fat profile, lowers LDL cholesterol instead of raising it, and is the oil recommended by major heart health organizations. Coconut oil isn’t without its uses, but the health claims surrounding it have outpaced the evidence.
Fat Profiles at a Glance
The biggest difference between these two oils is the type of fat they contain, and it’s not close. Coconut oil is roughly 91% saturated fat. Nearly half of that (46%) is lauric acid, with another 18.5% from myristic acid and 9.5% from palmitic acid. A single tablespoon delivers about 12 grams of saturated fat.
Canola oil, by contrast, is only 6 to 8% saturated fat. About 62% of its fat is monounsaturated (the same type that makes olive oil popular), and another 31% is polyunsaturated. It also supplies 9 to 11% alpha-linolenic acid, a plant-based omega-3 fatty acid that most people don’t get enough of. Few cooking oils deliver meaningful omega-3s, which gives canola a nutritional edge that often goes unnoticed.
How Each Oil Affects Cholesterol
Multiple human trials have compared coconut oil head-to-head with unsaturated plant oils, and the pattern is consistent: coconut oil raises LDL (“bad”) cholesterol more than oils like corn, safflower, soybean, and olive oil. The gap isn’t trivial. Across controlled feeding studies, people eating coconut oil had LDL levels 0.24 to 1.03 mmol/L higher than those eating unsaturated alternatives. To put that in perspective, a sustained increase at the upper end of that range meaningfully raises cardiovascular risk over time.
Coconut oil does tend to raise HDL (“good”) cholesterol as well. In several trials, HDL was higher on coconut oil diets than on corn oil, safflower oil, or olive oil diets. But most cardiologists consider an LDL increase a bigger concern than an HDL increase is a benefit, especially when you can raise HDL through exercise and other dietary changes without the LDL trade-off.
Canola oil pushes things in the opposite direction. A meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials found that replacing saturated fats with canola oil lowered total cholesterol by about 0.59 mmol/L and LDL cholesterol by about 0.49 mmol/L. It also modestly reduced triglycerides. These are the kinds of shifts that dietary guidelines are built around.
What Health Organizations Say
The American Heart Association advises against using coconut oil as a regular cooking fat. Their reasoning is straightforward: over 80% of it is saturated fat, and saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol. The AHA recommends keeping saturated fat below 6% of daily calories to protect heart health. On an 1,800-calorie diet, that’s about 12 grams per day, and a single tablespoon of coconut oil uses up the entire allowance.
Canola oil, on the other hand, is one of the oils health organizations specifically recommend as a replacement for saturated fats. It fits comfortably into heart-healthy dietary patterns like the Mediterranean and DASH diets.
The Medium-Chain Triglyceride Claim
Much of coconut oil’s health reputation rests on the idea that it’s rich in medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), which the body processes differently than long-chain fats. MCTs are absorbed more quickly and can be converted into ketones for energy, which has fueled claims about metabolism and weight loss.
The problem is that coconut oil isn’t a great source of true MCTs. The fatty acids most strongly linked to those metabolic effects are caprylic acid (C8) and capric acid (C10), and coconut oil contains only about 6 to 8% of each. The dominant fat in coconut oil is lauric acid, which makes up roughly 45 to 50% of the oil. Lauric acid is technically classified as a medium-chain fatty acid by its carbon count, but the body metabolizes it more like a long-chain fat. So the MCT benefits people read about in studies using concentrated MCT oil don’t translate directly to spoonfuls of coconut oil.
Cooking Performance
For practical kitchen use, the two oils are surprisingly similar in heat tolerance. Refined canola oil and refined coconut oil both have smoke points around 204°C (400°F), making them suitable for sautéing, baking, and moderate frying. Virgin (unrefined) coconut oil has a lower smoke point of about 177°C (350°F), so it’s less versatile if you’re cooking at higher temperatures.
Canola oil has a neutral flavor, which makes it a better all-purpose option for dishes where you don’t want the oil to compete with other ingredients. Coconut oil adds a mild coconut taste, which works in certain baked goods, curries, and stir-fries but can be unwelcome in others. Refined coconut oil has less flavor than virgin, but it’s still perceptible in some dishes.
Is Canola Oil Processing a Concern?
Some people avoid canola oil because it’s typically extracted using hexane, an industrial solvent. This sounds alarming, but the residue levels in finished oil are extremely low. Testing of commercial canola oil found hexane residues of about 0.043 mg/kg, which is far below the European regulatory limit of 1 mg/kg for extracted oils. Cold-pressed and expeller-pressed canola oils skip the hexane step entirely, if you’d rather avoid it altogether.
Virgin coconut oil is typically extracted mechanically without chemical solvents, which gives it a cleaner processing story. If minimal processing matters to you, virgin coconut oil or cold-pressed canola oil are both reasonable choices.
When Coconut Oil Still Makes Sense
Coconut oil isn’t poison. It works well in specific roles: as a solid fat replacement in vegan baking (where butter isn’t an option), as a flavor element in Southeast Asian and South Asian cooking, or as an occasional ingredient in recipes that call for it specifically. In small, infrequent amounts, it’s unlikely to meaningfully affect your cholesterol.
The issue is using it as your primary cooking oil, day in and day out. That’s where the saturated fat adds up and the cardiovascular math starts working against you. If you’re choosing one oil to keep on the counter for everyday cooking, canola is the stronger choice by a wide margin. It costs less, has a more favorable fat profile, lowers LDL cholesterol, supplies omega-3s, and works in virtually any recipe.