When it comes to advertising, coconut oil is a panacea. It would help with hair problems, with skin diseases, as a sunscreen, with inflammation of the upper respiratory tract, but is also used to lose weight, for example, as kokosoel.info, an "independent guide to valuable coconut oil" writes. But Prof. Dr. Dr. Karin Michels, director of the Institute for Prevention and Tumor Epidemiology at the University Hospital of Freiburg and professor at Harvard until 2015, sees things differently. Her lecture "About coconut oil and other nutritional errors" in Freiburg was surprisingly well attended and has been making waves on the internet for days.

No wonder, says the scientist in her speech, but the popular coconut oil to fight. "Coconut oil is pure poison," says Michels. "It's one of the worst foods you can ever consume," continues Michels, "Coconut oil is more dangerous for you than lard." The oil has almost exclusively saturated fat that clogs the coronary arteries and thus the risk of increased heart attack.

Coconut oil is currently one of the so-called "superfoods", which usually appear out of nowhere, and are suddenly recommended on every corner and supposedly help against almost everything. "We are all flooded with information about nutrition," says Michels in her lecture. The misconception that coconut oil is good has also spread through the "phenomenal advertising". That is why they try to present the truth on the basis of the data in their field of nutrition. "There is no human study that shows positive effects of coconut oil," she says. The American cardiac company also recently advises not to take coconut oil for itself. This recommendation is not yet available in Germany.

The YouTube video, which shows Michels' lecture, has been viewed more than 940,000 times – and the trend continues to rise. Coconut oil is apparently a problem that people move, as evidenced by the buzz that runs through the room while Michels tears the popular oil in the air. Whether the listeners draw a conclusion from the lecture is of course a different matter. And whether the so-called "healthy" coconut oil is just as healthy as the advertising wants the customer to believe or is as unhealthy as Michels suggests, can only be proven by studies about people.