You'll Never Catch Giada De Laurentiis Eating This Tropical Fruit

Magnetic food personality Giada De Laurentiis makes you feel like you can churn out her sun-kissed Italian dishes with just the gentlest nudge. Everything she attempts appears effortless, down to plating her pasta in a gentle and aesthetically pleasing nest. While she encourages home cooks to embrace ingredients and use them in varied ways, there is one ingredient she just can't get behind, and that is coconut. 

Despite the song indicating otherwise, there is no putting the lime in the coconut for Giada De Laurentiis. In an interview with The Feast on Bravo online, De Laurentiis shared "I don't eat coconut. I don't like anything with coconut. Not [coconut] water. Just no coconut — at all. In anything." De Laurentiis is not the only Food Network chef who is averse to a particular ingredient: Rachael Ray famously dislikes mayonnaise and will avoid it at all costs.

Giada De Laurentiis is apparently not alone. According to a 2023 survey by The Harris Poll and Instacart published on Allrecipes, 16% of American grocery shoppers don't like coconut. Coconut can be a polarizing ingredient for its taste, but also for its health claims. De Laurentiis may be onto something in avoiding the fruit, because despite a popular belief that it might be beneficial for heart health, coconut oil is very high in saturated fat. Though it has been suggested that coconut oil can raise the "good" type of cholesterol, its reputation for being heart healthy doesn't have much scientific backing.

While coconut is consumed in many iterations, from tropical drinks like piña coladas to riffs on classic desserts like four-ingredient coconut cake, it is also used as a cooking fat. De Laurentiis skips the coconut oil and instead leans into her Italian roots for go-to cooking fats like extra virgin olive oil or even butter. If you'd like to stick to Giada-approved pantry ingredients and forego the coconut as well, make sure to stock up on other colorful ingredients instead like canned tomatoes, fig jam, Calabrian chili paste, and dried pasta.