Butter/Ghee vs Coconut Oil vs Tallow (Rambling)

Butter/Ghee is more nutritious than coconut oil. They contain fat-soluble vitamins, conjugated linoleic acid, gamma linolenic acid, dihomo-gamma linolenic acid, arachiadonic acid, DHA and EPA. But coconut oil contains only its precursors - linoleic and alpha-linolenic acid. So coconut oil is less nutritious in terms of fat-soluble vitamins and fatty acids.

Despite this, coconut oil has an advantage in terms of the antiviral, antimicrobial, and antifungal properties of its lauric acid content. In addition, its short and medium-chain triglycerides helps speed up the metabolism by the means of competitive inhibition of the polyunsaturated free fatty acids.

When it comes to total PUFA content, they make little difference. Butter/Ghee is 4% PUFA, while coconut oil is 2% PUFA. Since the PUFAs are spatially separated, they can't do much in terms of oxidizability (Ray Peat hypothesized this in his coconut oil article).

Grass-fed tallow has a nutritional profile similar to butter. It also has a similar fatty acid profile to butter - about 67% saturated, and 30% monounsaturated.

One misconception is that the cholesterol in butter and tallow will be oxidized during cooking. However, it's untrue because the more stable saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids will protect the cholesterol from being oxidized. So enjoy your butter/ghee and tallow!

One concern is that butter and tallow has a monounsaturated content of 30%, which is higher than coconut oil - which only 6% are MUFAs. MUFAs are less stable than saturated fats, so they will cause more oxidative stress. But I don't know how stable monounsaturated fatty acids are, so I can't give your any opinion.

But the big picture is that coconut oil, tallow, and butter are excellent cooking oils that comparing them makes so little difference when compared to the toxic polyunsaturated oils (which I'm currently consuming "in average quantities").

Butter (grass-fed) is the most expensive, at $6 per pound. Coconut oil is the second most expensive, at $2-3 per pound. But tallow is the cheapest by far - I heard that you can even get it for free in some places where the demand for animal fat is low.