Coconut Oil
Your pantry and food storage shouldn’t be without virgin, organic coconut oil, a powerfully nutritious raw food with many healing uses. In fact, your challenge from Green Smoothie Girl is that by the time you finish reading this report, you’ll go grab that rancid bottle of refined vegetable oil, chuck it in the garbage, and vow never to buy it again.
So, what are the health benefits of coconut oil?
Coconut oil is 64% medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs), which burn as energy quickly rather storing in the body as fat (especially belly fat) like the long-chains. MCFAs are quite rare in foods and have massive positive implications for your health. Because the processed vegetable oil industry tried to malign the tropical oils years ago, many consumers have no idea what great nutrition they are missing out on. In fact, I believe that removing MCFA’s from the diet for a few decades may have had a serious negative effect on neurological health. There is some evidence that large doses of organic, cold-pressed coconut oil has positive effects for people with ALS, MS, and other degenerative neurological conditions.
Coconut oil is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-parasite, and anti-fungal. It prevents heart disease, linked by recent research to lingering infections in the blood and tissues that coconut oil kills. It has been documented to inhibit carcinogenic agents that cause colon cancer and breast tumors in animals.
Coconut oil is highly alkaline and purifies the blood—never clogging arteries since it’s liquid above 76 degrees. It is used in hospitals around the world: it’s ideal for people with digestion problems because the medium-chain triglycerides don’t require pancreatic enzymes or bile to digest. It’s perfect for diabetics because it helps regulate blood sugar and supplies energy to cells without affecting blood sugar or insulin levels. It’s been shown to improve insulin secretion and utilization of blood glucose.
How does it compare to other oils?
Coconut oil is very stable and doesn’t go rancid for 2-3 years or more, even when stored at room temperature. Refined oils are rancid already when you buy them, heated above 400 degrees and often bombarded with hydrogen atoms to make them fake foods, trans fatty acids that damage or destroy every cell they touch.
Another rare feature of coconut oil is that its main component is lauric acid, the powerful antimicrobial, immune-function compound in mother’s breast milk. That’s why baby formula companies use it for fatty acids in formula—it’s the closest they can get to mother’s milk. (Unfortunately, they use an inexpensive processed version of the oil.)It’s the only oil that doesn’t create trans fats even when heated to high temps, as in sauteeing—so it’s perfect for cooking and even better as a raw food. (Chapter 4 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods has wonderful recipes using coconut oil.) It tastes SO good—my kids eat it plain by the spoonful. You want virgin, unprocessed oil for coconutty flavor and maximized nutrition. If it has no flavor, you’ve bought a poor product missing some of the benefits.
Much has been written about EFAs in the raw diet—essential fatty acids with omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that your body cannot manufacture itself and therefore must receive from food. I put a tablespoon of fresh flax oil in my green smoothie to get these compounds. Although coconut oil isn’t a significant source of EFAs, it can increase the efficiency of EFAs by as much as 100%!
Coconut oil health benefits include combating viral infections including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and AIDS; helping with gallbladder disease, osteoporosis, Crohn’s Disease, and hypoglycemia; and nourishing premature, low-birth-weight babies. Many people say coconut oil helps them control sugar cravings.
Change your health dramatically by making a very simple change today: throw out any vegetable oil (and margarine and shortening) in your pantry, never buy it again, and replace it with a raw food alternative. Discover amazing coconut oil health benefits for yourself!
