Hi Lisa,

Are oils considered low carb? For example, olive oil, coconut oil...

Dear Lori -

There are four sources of energy that your body can burn for fuel. These categories are fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and alcohols. So all calories come from those four sources.

Olive Oil is solely an oil. It is only a fat. It has zero carbs. It has zero proteins. It has zero alcohols. So 100% of its calories come from fats.

Coconut oil is also solely an oil. Again, it only has fat. It has zero carbs, zero proteins, and zero alcohols.

Now that being said, the aim of low carb is to lower your carb count as a "mental shorthand" for eating healthy foods that are low in sugar. It's not a license to gorge on as many other calorie-rich items as you can ingest . So while coconut oil only has calories from fats, it has a LOT of calories from fats. If you ate a cup of coconut oil you'd ingest almost 2,000 calories. So that's not healthy.

So your aim is still to eat healthy, fresh, natural foods, while avoiding excess sugars.

Certainly putting reasonable amounts of olive oil on your salad is quite fine though! That's what one should aim for. Healthy