Experimenting with Oils: Part 3 Coconut Oil - The Wonder Fat
Read on to find out more about Coconut Oil - The Wonder Fat
Coconut oil is one of the safest, best oils to use for cooking. Coconut oil is a saturated fat. Now, before you get all huffy about saturated fats, please understand that they are NOT bad for you see my first blog post on Experimenting with Oils called "Fat, The Healthy Kind".
Studies show that people who consume proper amounts of saturated fats are actually healthier than a person on a low fat diet filled with trans-fatty acids (Heart Disease and a Little Help from Vitamin K). All trans-fatty acids cause inflammation--they are the true culprits of poor health. Just take a look at the rise of obesity in the past 50 years since the myth about saturated fats was devised. In short, not all fats are created equal, and coconut oil is one of the good ones.
As a saturated fat, coconut oil is highly stable in nature and does not go rancid easily even at higher temperatures, as opposed to polyunsaturated fats. It can sit in the cupboard for up to a year before needing to be tossed. It is solid at a temperature of 76 or less, and turns into a liquid at 76 or above. And it is perfect for putting in your frying pan as it does great when heated.
Benefits of Coconut Oil:
- It is good for the body in many different processes
- Is it abundant in medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) which are quickly converted by the body into energy, good things for blood sugar regulation and weight loss.
- Contains myristic acid and palmitic acid, essential acids for communication between the kidneys.
- Supports the thyroid gland in controlling metabolism and energy level.
- Can help reduce “belly fat”
- Smoothes out the sugar roller coaster swings of hypoglycemia
- It is an immune booster
- Coconut oil contains lauric acid which is converted by the body into monolaurin. This helps the immune system fight off a number of viral, bacterial and fungal disease organisms including:
- Viruses - herpes, measles, HIV
- Bacteria – listeria, staphylococcus, and streptococcus
- Parasites – giardia lamblia (causes gastroenteritis)
- Fungus – Candida
- It is synergistic with essential fatty acids
- If your diet is already high in saturated fats, (again, NOT bad for you in moderation), consuming coconut oil won’t make any difference. It has neither omega-3 or omega-6 fatty acids, so you don’t have to worry about overstocking on those!
- It can be a great moisturizer for you skin and hair
- It is antimicrobial and fights dandruff (a fungus in the Candida family)
- Can be in contact with the skin for several hours without consequence--put on right before going to bed at night and then wash off/out in the morning
Beware of Liquid Coconut Oil:
Liquid coconut oil (also known as MCT oil), marketed for cooking and baking, is a relatively new fad. It is NOT naturally occurring--it is genetically modified coconut oil. In fact, the chemical process it goes through actually removes the best part--lauric acid--which counts for approximately half of the original constitution of coconut oil. If you’re removing half of the whole, can you really label and market it as the same thing?
I call it a fake.
What about Coconut Milk?
Here we find processing at its best yet again! Coconut milk separates and spoils easily. When you see coconut milk on the shelf, it’s probably pumped up with stabilizers that are likely not included on the ingredient list such as soy lecithin or guar gum (which can cause problems for gluten sensitive folks). Again, beware of this product. The best source of coconut milk is to buy a real coconut and just make it/drink it right from the fruit itself.
How to Buy Coconut Oil:
Coconut oil can be found in almost every grocery store these days, but how do you know you’re getting the best of the best? Look for words such as Cold Pressed, Organic, Raw, Virgin or Unrefined, and Fair Trade. These will lead you to purchasing the purest product available.
If you’re looking for coconut oil to apply to your skin or hair, there are some great options available through my shop! Wellevate. Creating an account is free and shipping is free with a purchases $49 and over.
Cooking with healthy fats is just the beginning to eating better and feeling better. If you struggle with autoimmune disease, fatigue, hormone imbalance, infertility, weight gain, depression or gastrointestinal health, let’s talk about how I can help you heal yourself. I offer a 20-minute Health Discovery Session for $49 to get you on the right path to wellness. Contact me today.
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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