An Underused and Powerful Food
by Willie Victor
After an earlier newsletter article appeared in which I wrote about the selecting the right cooking oils, many readers were surprised to learn that an excellent choice is coconut oil. I’m taking the opportunity to explain further why this is.
Coconut oil not only has a wonderful flavor that enhances fish and vegetables, which makes these healthy foods more desirable, but, unlike many oils, can be heated and not alter its properties. This allows us to use it to cook foods with high temperatures.
Many of us tend to think that margarine and oils such as canola, corn, safflower, and soybean are healthier because they are unsaturated fats. This is because we’ve grown up exposed to campaigns by producers of these oils which warned against eating saturated fats, such as those in coconut oil and butter. We now know the reverse to be true.
Several studies have found that the coconut promotes good health. Research in tropical climates with people whose diets are high in coconut has shown low rates of heart disease, cancer, and colon problems. Professor Mark Wahlqvist, director of the Asian Pacific Health and Nutrition Center at Monash University, has been examining the health of people in West Sumatra for 25 years, where the coconut is a staple of the cuisine. He found that when they began to use other oils instead as they became available, their rate of coronary heart disease began to increase.
Coconut has the following beneficial properties:
- Stable – Even after one year at room temperature, coconut oil shows no evidence of rancidity. The theory behind this is that coconut oil may have antioxidant properties. Unsaturated oils, by contrast, become rancid in just a few hours after being exposed to heat. This is why food cooked with these oils grows stale, even when refrigerated. Even when not cooked, these oils become rancid in our digestive system, due to our body heat.
- Fights cancer – Studies have shown that in chemically induced cancers of the colon and breast, coconut oil was far more protective than unsaturated oils. 32% of those who ate corn oil got colon cancer versus 3% of those who ate coconut oil. One study found that animals fed unsaturated oils had more tumors, due to the unsaturated fats suppressing the thyroid and therefore suppressing the immune system.
- Anti-fungal, anti-microbial, and antibacterial – Coconut oil contains medium chain fatty acids such as lauric, caprylic, and myristic acids. Lauric acid has the same nutraceutical effects as mother’s milk, creating an adverse effect on pathogenic bacteria, yeast, and fungi.
- Lowers cholesterol and has anti-aging effects - One study found that Islanders with a diet high in coconut oil who lowered it after migrating to New Zealand, had an increase in their cholesterol – especially their low-density protein (LDL). The cholesterol-lowering properties of coconut oil are a direct result of its ability to stimulate the function of the thyroid. In the presence of adequate thyroid hormone, LDL is converted by an enzymatic process to anti-aging steroids, substances required to prevent heart disease, senility, obesity, cancer and other diseases associated with aging.
- Stimulates weight loss – In the 1940s farmers attempted to use coconut oil to fatten their animals but discovered that it instead increased their appetites and activity and therefore made them lean. They then tried anti-thyroid medication to fatten them with less food but the drug was later discovered to be carcinogenic. In the late 1940s, they found they could achieve the same anti-thyroid effect by feeding animal soybeans. This is one of the reasons I remove soy from my client’s diets, especially if they have thyroid problems.
There are many good reasons, therefore, to reach for the coconut oil the next time you cook.
