Information on Coconut Oil

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/oilingamerica.1.html

 

The OILING of AMERICA

Part 1 of 2

Modern-day diets high in hydrogenated vegetable oils instead of traditional animal fats are implicated in causing a significant increase in heart disease and cancer.

 

© 1998 by Mary G. Enig, PhD

MGEnig@aol.com

&

© 1998 by Sally Fallon

SAFallon@aol.com

 

 

After the Second World War, 'improvements' made it possible to plasticise highly unsaturated oils from corn and soybeans. New catalysts allowed processors to 'selectively hydrogenate' the kinds of fatty acids found in soy and canola oils - those with three double bonds. Called 'partial hydrogenation', this new method allowed processors to replace cotton-seed oil with more unsaturated corn and soybean oils in margarines and shortenings. This spurred a meteoric rise in soybean production from virtually nothing in 1900 to 70 million tons in 1970, surpassing corn production. Today, soy oil dominates the market and is used in almost 80 per cent of all hydrogenated oils.

 

The particular mix of fatty acids in soy oil results in shortenings containing about 40 per cent trans fats - an increase of about 5 per cent over cotton-seed oil and 15 per cent over corn oil. Canola oil, processed from a hybrid form of rape-seed, is particularly rich in fatty acids containing three double bonds and can contain as much as 50 per cent trans fats. Trans fats of a particularly problematic type are also formed during the process of deodorising canola oil, although they are not indicated on labels for canola oil.

 

Certain forms of trans fatty acids occur naturally in dairy fats. Trans vaccenic acid makes up about four per cent of the fatty acids in butter. It is an interim product which the ruminant animal then converts to conjugated linoleic acid, a highly beneficial anti-carcinogenic component of animal fat. Humans seem to utilise the small amounts of trans vaccenic acid in butter fat without ill effects.

 

However, most of the trans isomers in modern hydrogenated fats are new to the human physiology. By the early 1970s, a number of researchers had expressed concern about their presence in the American diet, noting that the increasing use of hydrogenated fats had paralleled the increase in both heart disease and cancer. The unstated solution was one that could be easily presented to the public: eat natural, traditional fats; avoid newfangled foods made from vegetable oils; use butter, not margarine.

 

But medical research and public consciousness took a different tack - one that accelerated the decline of traditional foods like meat, eggs and butter, and fuelled continued dramatic increases in vegetable oil consumption.

 

 

About the Authors:

 

Mary G. Enig, PhD, is an expert of international renown in the field of lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies, in America and Israel, on the content and effects of trans fatty acids, and has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans fatty acids has brought increased attention to her work. She is a licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness, a nutrition consultant to individuals, industry, and state and federal governments, a contributing editor to a number of scientific publications, a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition, and President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She is the author of over 60 technical papers and presentations, as well as a popular lecturer. Dr Enig is currently working on the exploratory development of an adjunct therapy for AIDS using complete medium-chain saturated fatty acids from whole foods. She is the mother of three healthy children brought up on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.

 

Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (with Pat Connolly, Executive Director of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, and Mary G. Enig, PhD), as well as of numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. She is Vice President of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation and editor of the Foundation's quarterly journal. She is the mother of four healthy children raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat. Her publications may by obtained by contacting the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation in San Diego, California, USA, on (619) 574 7763.

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/oilingamerica.2.html

 

The OILING of AMERICA

Part 2 of 2

Modern-day diets high in hydrogenated vegetable oils instead of traditional animal fats are implicated in causing a significant increase in heart disease and cancer.

 

 

Early in 1985, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) heard more testimony on the trans fat issue. Enig alone represented the alarmist point of view, while Hunter and Applewhite of the ISEO and Ronald Simpson, then with the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers, assured the panel that trans fats in the food supply posed no danger. Enig reported on University of Maryland research that delineated the differences in small amounts of naturally occurring trans fats in butter, which do not inhibit enzyme function at the cellular level, and man-made trans fats in margarines and vegetable shortenings, which do. She also noted a 1981 feeding trial in which swine fed trans fatty acids developed higher parameters for heart disease than those fed saturated fats, especially when trans fatty acids were combined with added polyunsaturates.24 Her testimony was omitted from the final report, although her name in the bibliography created the impression that her research supported the FASEB whitewash.25

 

 

Excess consumption of vegetable oils is especially damaging to the reproductive organs and the lungs - both of which are sites for huge increases in cancer in Americans. In test animals, diets high in polyunsaturates from vegetable oils inhibit the ability to learn, especially under conditions of stress; they are toxic to the liver; they compromise the integrity of the immune system; they depress the mental and physical growth of infants; they increase levels of uric acid in the blood; they cause abnormal fatty acid profiles in the adipose tissues; they have been linked to mental decline and chromosomal damage; and they accelerate ageing.

 

Excess consumption of polyunsaturates is associated with increasing rates of cancer, heart disease and weight gain. The excessive use of commercial vegetable oils interferes with the production of prostaglandins, leading to an array of complaints ranging from autoimmune disease to premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Disruption of prostaglandin production leads to an increased tendency to form blood clots, and hence to myocardial infarction - which has reached epidemic levels in the US.41

 

Vegetable oils are more toxic when heated. One study reported that polyunsaturates turn to varnish in the intestines. A study by a plastic surgeon found that women who consumed mostly vegetable oils had far more wrinkles than those who used traditional animal fats. A 1994 study published in the Lancet showed that almost three-quarters of the fat in artery clogs is unsaturated. The 'artery-clogging' fats are not animal fats but vegetable oils.42

 

 

Foods containing trans fat sell because the American public is afraid of the alternative: saturated fats found in tallow, lard, butter, palm oil and coconut oil - fats traditionally used for frying and baking. Yet the scientific literature delineates a number of vital roles for dietary saturated fats: they enhance the immune system,54 are necessary for healthy bones,55 provide energy and structural integrity to the cells,56 protect the liver,57 and enhance the body's use of essential fatty acids.58 Stearic acid, found in beef tallow and butter, has cholesterol-lowering properties and is a preferred food for the heart.59 As saturated fats are stable, they do not become rancid easily, they do not call upon the body's reserves of antioxidants, they do not initiate cancer, and they do not irritate the artery walls.

 

Your body makes saturated fats, and your body makes cholesterol - about 2,000 mg per day. In general, cholesterol that the average American absorbs from food amounts to about 100 mg per day. So, in theory, even reducing animal foods to zero will result in only a five per cent decrease in the total amount of cholesterol available to the blood and tissues. In practice, such a diet is likely to deprive the body of the substrates it needs to manufacture enough of this vital substance.

 

Cholesterol, like saturated fats, stands unfairly accused. It acts as a precursor to vital corticosteroids (hormones that help us deal with stress and protect the body against heart disease and cancer) and to the sex hormones like androgen, testosterone, oestrogen and progesterone. It is a precursor to vitamin D, a very important fat-soluble vitamin needed for healthy bones and nervous system, proper growth, mineral metabolism, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction and immune system function. And it is the precursor to bile salts which are vital for digestion and assimilation of fats in the diet.

 

Recent research shows that cholesterol acts as an antioxidant.60 This is the likely explanation for the fact that cholesterol levels go up with age. As an antioxidant, cholesterol protects us against free-radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer. Cholesterol is the body's repair substance, manufactured in large amounts when the arteries are irritated or weak. Blaming heart disease on high serum cholesterol levels is like blaming firemen, who have come to put out a fire, for starting the blaze.

 

Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain.61 Serotonin is the body's natural 'feel-good' chemical. This explains why low cholesterol levels have been linked to aggressive and violent behaviour, depression and suicidal tendencies. Mother's milk is particularly rich in cholesterol and contains a special enzyme that helps the baby utilise this nutrient. Babies and children need cholesterol-rich foods throughout their growing years to ensure proper development of the brain and nervous system. Dietary cholesterol plays an important role in maintaining the health of the intestinal wall,62 which is why low-cholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome and other intestinal disorders.

 

Animal foods containing saturated fat and cholesterol provide vital nutrients necessary for growth, energy and protection from degenerative disease. Like sex, animal fats are necessary for reproduction. Humans are drawn to both by powerful instincts. Suppression of natural appetites leads to weird nocturnal habits, fantasies, fetishes, bingeing and splurging. Animal fats are nutritious and satisfying and they taste good.

 

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/canola.html

 

The Great Con-ola

Canola oil has a number of undesirable health effects when used as the main source of dietary fats, although these side effects can be offset by the intake of saturated fats.

 

© 2002 by Sally Fallon

Email: SAFallon@aol.com

and Mary G. Enig, PhD

Email: marye@enig.com

 

 

Canola oil is a poisonous substance, an industrial oil that does not belong in the body. It contains "the infamous chemical warfare agent mustard gas", haemagglutinins and toxic cyanide-containing glycosides; it causes mad cow disease, blindness, nervous disorders, clumping of blood cells and depression of the immune system.

 

 

About the Authors:

 

- Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (New Trends Publishing, tel +1 [219] 268 2601, 2nd ed., 1999) and President of the Weston A. Price Foundation based in Washington, DC, USA (website http://www.WestonAPrice.org). She can be emailed at SAFallon@aol.com.

 

- Dr. Mary G. Enig holds an MS and PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maryland in the USA. She is a consulting nutritionist and biochemist of international renown and an expert in fats/oils analysis and metabolism, food chemistry and composition and nutrition and dietetics. Dr Enig is President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association, Vice President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Director of the Nutritional Sciences Division at Enig Associates, Inc. Dr Enig is the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol (Bethesda Press, 2000, http://www.BethesdaPress.com). Her articles, "The Oiling of America" and "Tragedy and Hype: The Third International Soy Symposium", co-written with Sally Fallon, were published in NEXUS 6/01-6/02 and 7/03 respectively. Her article on "The Health Benefits of Coconuts" was published in NEXUS 9/02-9/03. Dr Enig can be contacted at: Enig Associates, Inc., 12501 Prosperity Drive, Suite 340, Silver Spring, MD 20904-1689, USA, tel +1 (301) 680 8600, fax +1 (301) 680 8100, email marye@enig.com.

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/coconuts1.html

 

The Health Benefits of Coconuts & Coconut Oil

Part 1 of 2

Coconuts and coconut oil contain health-promoting saturated fatty acids and derivative compounds which have powerful antimicrobial properties.

 

by Mary G. Enig, PhD, FACN

© 1999, 2001

Director

Nutritional Sciences Division

Enig Associates, Inc.

12501 Prosperity Drive, Suite 340 Silver Spring, MD 20904-1689, USA

Telephone: +1 (301) 680 8600

Fax: +1 (301) 680 8100

Email: marye@enig.com

 

In my presentation today, I will bring you up to date about the new recognition of "functional foods" as important components in the diet. Additionally, I would like to review briefly the state of the anti - saturated fat situation and bring you up to date on some of the research that compares the beneficial effects of saturated fats with those of omega-6 polyunsaturates, as well as the beneficial effects of the saturated fats relative to the detrimental effects of the partially hydrogenated fats and the trans fatty acids. In particular, I will review some of the surprising beneficial effects of the special saturates found in coconut oil as they compare with those of the unsaturates found in some of the other food oils. Components of coconut oil are increasingly being shown to be beneficial. Increasingly, lauric acid and even capric acid have been the subject of favourable scientific reports on health parameters.

 

 

About the Author:

Dr Mary G. Enig holds an MS and PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maryland in the USA. She is a consulting nutritionist and biochemist of international renown and an expert in fats/oils analysis and metabolism, food chemistry and composition and nutrition and dietetics.

 

Dr Enig is Director of the Nutritional Sciences Division of Enig Associates, Inc., President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association and a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. She is also Vice President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and Science Editor of the Foundation's publication. Dr Enig has many years of experience as a lecturer and has taught graduate-level courses for the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Maryland, where she was a Faculty Research Associate in the Lipids Research Group, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland. She also maintains a limited clinical practice for patients needing nutritional assessment and consultation.

 

Dr Enig has extensive experience consulting and lecturing on nutrition to individuals, medical and allied health groups, the food processing industry and state and federal governments in the US. She also lectures and acts as a consultant to the international health and food processing communities. Since 1995 she has been invited to make presentations at scientific meetings in Europe, India, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Micronesia.

 

Dr Enig is the author of numerous journal publications, mainly on fats and oils research and nutrient/drug interactions. She also wrote the book Know Your Fats (Bethesda Press, Silver Spring, MD, May 2000). She is a popular media spokesperson and was an early critic speaking out about the use of trans fatty acids and advocating their inclusion in nutritional labelling.

 

One of Dr Enig's recent research topics dealt with the development of a nutritional protocol for proposed clinical trials of a non-drug treatment for HIV/AIDS patients. Her articles, "The Oiling of America" and "Tragedy and Hype: The Third International Soy Symposium", written with nutritionist/ researcher Sally Fallon, were published in NEXUS 6/01 - 2 and 7/03 respectively.

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/coconuts2.html

 

The Health Benefits of Coconuts & Coconut Oil

Part 2 of 2

Scientific research proves that the saturated fatty acids and derivative compounds found in coconuts and coconut oil have significant benefits for a healthy immune system and metabolism.

 

 

Coconut oil appears to help the immune system response in a beneficial manner. Feeding coconut oil in the diet completely abolished the expected immune factor responses to endotoxin that were seen with corn oil feeding. This inhibitory effect on interleukin-1 production was interpreted by the authors of the study as being largely due to a reduced prostaglandin and leukotriene production (Wan and Grimble, 1987). However, the damping may be due to the fact that effects from high omega-6 oils tend to be normalised by coconut oil feeding.

 

Another report from this group (Bibby and Grimble, 1990) compared the effects of corn oil and coconut oil diets on tumour necrosis factor-alpha and endotoxin induction of the inflammatory prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) production. The animals fed coconut oil did not produce an increase in PGE2, and the researchers again interpreted this as a modulatory effect that brought about a reduction of phospholipid arachidonic acid content.

 

Another study from the same research group (Tappia and Grimble, 1994) showed that omega-6 oil enhanced inflammatory stimuli, but that coconut oil, along with fish oil and olive oil, suppressed the production of interleukin-1.

 

Several recent studies are showing additional helpful effects of consuming coconut oil on a regular basis, thus supplying the body with the lauric acid derivative, monolaurin. Monolaurin and the ether analogue of monolaurin have been shown to have the potential for damping adverse reactions to toxic forms of glutamic acid (Dave et al., 1997). Lauric acid and capric acid have been reported to have very potent effects on insulin secretion (Garfinkel et al., 1992). Using a model system of murine splenocytes, Witcher et al. (1996) showed that monolaurin induced proliferation of T-cells and inhibited the toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 mitogenic effects on T-cells.

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/DiabetesDeception.html

 

Our Deadly Diabetes Deception

Greed and dishonest science have promoted a lucrative worldwide epidemic of diabetes that honesty and good science can quickly reverse by naturally restoring the body's blood-sugar control mechanism.

 

by Thomas Smith © 2004

PO Box 7685

Loveland, CO 80537 USA

Email: Valley@healingmatters.com

Website: http://www.Healingmatters.com

 

 

Today's diabetes industry is a massive community that has grown step by step from its dubious origins in the early 20th century. In the last 80 years it has become enormously successful at shutting out competitive voices that attempt to point out the fraud involved in modern diabetes treatment. It has matured into a religion. And, like all religions, it depends heavily upon the faith of the believer. So successful has it become that it verges on blasphemy to suggest that, in most cases, the kindly high priest with the stethoscope draped prominently around his neck is a charlatan and a fraud. In the large majority of cases, he has never cured a single case of diabetes in his entire medical career.

 

 

Many degenerative diseases can be traced to a massive failure of the endocrine system. This was well known to the physicians of the 1930s as insulin-resistant diabetes. This basic underlying disorder is known to be a derangement of the blood-sugar control system by badly engineered fats and oils. It is exacerbated and complicated by the widespread lack of other essential nutrition that the body needs to cope with the metabolic consequences of these poisons.

All fats and oils are not equal. Some are healthy and beneficial; many, commonly available in the supermarket, are poisonous. The health distinction is not between saturated and unsaturated, as the fats and oils industry would have us believe. Many saturated oils and fats are highly beneficial; many unsaturated oils are highly poisonous. The important health distinction is between natural and engineered.

There exists great dishonesty in advertising in the fats and oils industry. It is aimed at creating a market for cheap junk oils such as soy, cottonseed and rapeseed oils.

 

With an informed and aware public, these oils would have no market at all, and the USA—indeed, the world—would have far fewer cases of diabetes.

 

. . .

 

 

Diabetes is classically diagnosed as a failure of the body to metabolise carbohydrates properly. Its defining symptom is a high blood-glucose level. Type I diabetes results from insufficient insulin production by the pancreas. Type II diabetes results from ineffective insulin. In both types, the blood-glucose level remains elevated. Neither insufficient insulin nor ineffective insulin can limit post-prandial (after-eating) blood sugar to the normal range. In established cases of Type II diabetes, these elevated blood sugar levels are often preceded and accompanied by chronically elevated insulin levels and by serious distortions of other endocrine hormonal markers.

 

The ineffective insulin is no different from effective insulin. Its ineffectiveness lies in the failure of the cell population to respond to it. It is not the result of any biochemical defect in the insulin itself. Therefore, it is appropriate to note that this is a disease that affects almost every cell in the 70 trillion or so cells of the body. All of these cells are dependent upon the food that we eat for the raw materials they need for self repair and maintenance.

 

The classification of diabetes as a failure to metabolise carbohydrates is a traditional classification that originated in the early 19th century when little was known about metabolic diseases or processes.15 Today, with our increased knowledge of these processes, it would appear quite appropriate to define Type II diabetes more fundamentally as a failure of the body to metabolise fats and oils properly. This failure results in a loss of effectiveness of insulin and in the consequent failure to metabolise carbohydrates. Unfortunately, much medical insight into this matter, except at the research level, remains hampered by its 19th-century legacy.

 

Thus Type II diabetes and its early hyperinsulinaemic symptoms are whole-body symptoms of this basic cellular failure to metabolise glucose properly. Each cell of the body, for reasons which are becoming clearer, finds itself unable to transport glucose from the bloodstream to its interior. The glucose then remains in the bloodstream, or is stored as body fat or as glycogen, or is otherwise disposed of in urine.

It appears that when insulin binds to a cell membrane receptor, it initiates a complex cascade of biochemical reactions inside the cell. This causes a class of glucose transporters known as GLUT4 molecules to leave their parking area inside the cell and travel to the inside surface of the plasma cell membrane.

 

When in the membrane, they migrate to special areas of the membrane called caveolae areas.16 There, by another series of biochemical reactions, they identify and hook up with glucose molecules and transport them into the interior of the cell by a process called endocytosis. Within the cell's interior, this glucose is then burned as fuel by the mitochondria to produce energy to power cellular activity. Thus these GLUT4 transporters lower glucose in the bloodstream by transporting it out of the bloodstream into all the cells of the body.

 

Many of the molecules involved in these glucose- and insulin-mediated pathways are lipids; that is, they are fatty acids. A healthy plasma cell membrane, now known to be an active player in the glucose scenario, contains a complement of cis-type w=3 unsaturated fatty acids.17 This makes the membrane relatively fluid and slippery. When these cis- fatty acids are chronically unavailable because of our diet, trans- fatty acids and short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids are substituted in the cell membrane. These substitutions make the cellular membrane stiffer and more sticky, and inhibit the glucose transport mechanism.18

 

Thus, in the absence of sufficient cis omega 3 fatty acids in our diet, these fatty acid substitutions take place, the mobility of the GLUT4 transporters is diminished, the interior biochemistry of the cell is changed and glucose remains elevated in the bloodstream.

 

Elsewhere in the body, the pancreas secretes excess insulin, the liver manufactures fat from the excess sugar, the adipose cells store excess fat, the body goes into a high urinary mode, insufficient cellular energy is available for bodily activity and the entire endocrine system becomes distorted. Eventually, pancreatic failure occurs, body weight plummets and a diabetic crisis is precipitated.

 

Although there remains much work to be done to elucidate fully all of the steps in all of these pathways, this clearly marks the beginning of a biochemical explanation for the known epidemiological relationship between cheap, engineered dietary fats and oils and the onset of Type II diabetes.

 

 

About the Author:

Thomas Smith is a reluctant medical investigator, having been forced into curing his own diabetes because it was obvious that his doctor would not or could not cure it.

He has published the results of his successful diabetes investigation in his self-help manual, Insulin: Our Silent Killer, written for the layperson but also widely valued by the medical practitioner. This manual details the steps required to reverse Type II diabetes and references the work being done with Type I diabetes. The book may be purchased from the author at PO Box 7685, Loveland, Colorado 80537, USA (North American residents send $US25.00; overseas residents should contact the author for payment and shipping instructions).

Thomas Smith has also posted a great deal of useful information about diabetes on his website, http://www.Healingmatters. com. He can be contacted by telephone at +1 (970) 669 9176 and by email at valley@healingmatters.com.

 

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/soydangers.html

 

 

Tragedy and Hype

The Third International Soy Symposium

Far from being the perfect food, modern soy products contain antinutrients and toxins and they interfer with the absorption of vitamins and minerals.

 

© 2000 by Sally Fallon

SAFallon@aol.com

& Mary G. Enig, PhD

MGEnig@aol.com

All rights reserved

 

 

Just imagine. Farmers have been imagining - and planting more soy. What was once a minor crop, listed in the 1913 US Department of Agriculture (USDA) handbook not as a food but as an industrial product, now covers 72 million acres of American farmland. Much of this harvest will be used to feed chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows and salmon. Another large fraction will be squeezed to produce oil for margarine, shortenings and salad dressings.

 

Advances in technology make it possible to produce isolated soy protein from what was once considered a waste product - the defatted, high-protein soy chips - and then transform something that looks and smells terrible into products that can be consumed by human beings. Flavourings, preservatives, sweeteners, emulsifiers and synthetic nutrients have turned soy protein isolate, the food processors' ugly duckling, into a New Age Cinderella.

 

 

About the Authors:

Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (1999, 2nd edition, New Trends Publishing, tel +1 877 707 1776 or +1 219 268 2601) and President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Washington, DC (www.WestonAPrice.org).

 

Mary G. Enig, PhD, is the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol (2000, Bethesda Press, www.BethesdaPress.com), is President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association and Vice President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Washington, DC.

 

 

http://www.coconutoil.com/coconut_oil_21st_century.htm

 

Coconut: In Support of Good Health in the 21st Century

by

Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., F.A.C.N.

 12501 Prosperity Drive, Suite 340, Silver Spring, MD, 20904-1689 USA

 Tel: (301) 680-8600 Fax: (301) 680-8100

 

Abstract

 

 Coconuts play a unique role in the diets of mankind because they are the source of important physiologically functional components.  These physiologically functional components are found in the fat part of whole coconut, in the fat part of desiccated coconut, and in the extracted coconut oil.   Lauric acid, the major fatty acid from the fat of the coconut, has long been recognized for the unique properties that it lends to nonfood uses in the soaps and cosmetics industry.  More recently, lauric acid has been recognized for its unique properties in food use, which are related to its antiviral, antibacterial, and antiprotozoal functions.  Now, capric acid, another of coconut’s fatty acids has been added to the list of coconut’s antimicrobial components.  These fatty acids are found in the largest amounts only in traditional lauric fats, especially from coconut.  Also, recently published research has shown that natural coconut fat in the diet leads to a normalization of body lipids, protects against alcohol damage to the liver, and improves the immune system’s anti-inflammatory response.  Clearly, there has been increasing recognition of health- supporting functions of the fatty acids found in coconut.  Recent reports from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about required labeling of the trans fatty acids will put coconut oil in a more competitive position and may help return to its use by the baking and snack food industry where it has continued to be recognized for its functionality.  Now it can be recognized for another kind of functionality: the improvement of  the health of mankind.

 

 

 

http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/coconut_oil.html

 

 

A New Look at Coconut Oil

By Mary G. Enig, Ph.D.

 

Health and Nutritional Benefits from Coconut Oil: An Important Functional Food for the 21st Century

Presented at the AVOC Lauric Oils Symposium, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, 25 April 1996

 

Abstract

Coconut oil has a unique role in the diet as an important physiologically functional food. The health and nutritional benefits that can be derived from consuming coconut oil have been recognized in many parts of the world for centuries. Although the advantage of regular consumption of coconut oil has been underappreciated by the consumer and producer alike for the recent two or three decades, its unique benefits should be compelling for the health minded consumer of today. A review of the diet/heart disease literature relevant to coconut oil clearly indicates that coconut oil is at worst neutral with respect to atherogenicity of fats and oils and, in fact, is likely to be a beneficial oil for prevention and treatment of some heart disease. Additionally, coconut oil provides a source of antimicrobial lipid for individuals with compromised immune systems and is a nonpromoting fat with respect to chemical carcinogenesis.

 

 

 

MORE ARTICLES

 

 

http://www.coconutoil.com/research.htm

 

HEALTH OILS FROM THE TREE OF LIFE (NUTRITIONAL AND HEALTH ASPECTS OF COCONUT OIL) - Needs Adobe Acrobat Reader.

By Jon J. Kabara, Ph.D.

 

COCONUT OIL IN HEALTH AND DISEASE: ITS AND MONOLAURIN'S POTENTIAL AS CURE FOR HIV/AIDS - Needs Adobe Acrobat Reader.

By. Conrado S. Dayrit, MD. FACC. FPCC. FPCP

 

A diet rich in coconut oil reduces diurnal postprandial variations in circulating tissue plasminogen activator antigen and fasting lipoprotein (a) compared with a diet rich in unsaturated fat in women.

Journal of Nutrition, November 2003

 

The Benefits of Coconut Oil

by Dr. Raymond Peat

 

Tsunami Victims Survive on Coconuts

 

Virgin Coconut Oil and Diabetes

includes testimonies

 

Virgin Coconut Oil and Viruses

includes testimonies

 

Virgin Coconut Oil and HIV/AIDS

 

The Plain Truth About Coconut Oil

Dr. P. Rethinam and Muhartoyo

Asian and Pacific Coconut Community

 

Return from the Jungle - An Interview WITH CHRIS DAFOE

Scroll down and read all the great info on Coconuts and HIV

 

COCONUT OIL - WHY IS IT GOOD FOR YOU

By Dr. Lita Lee, Ph.D.

 

COCONUT OIL USES AND ISSUES ON ITS HEALTH AND NUTRACEUTICAL BENEFITS

By Emil V. Carandang, MS

 

Testimonies of AIDS sufferers using Coconut Oil in their treatment.

 

 

 

PRODUCTS

 

 

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/

 

Welcome to Tropical Traditions

 

 In the rural areas of the Philippines, far from roads and pollution, organic coconuts are harvested and transported to areas where they will be used to make Organic Virgin Coconut Oil for Tropical Traditions.

 

Home of America's favorite Coconut Oil!

 

 

BOOKS

 

 

The Coconut Diet

By Cherie Calbom

(New York: Warner Books, 2005)

http://www.coconutdiet.com/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446577162/102-6513085-6861727?v=glance&n=283155

 

The Coconut Diet

 

Coconuts are a way of life for millions of people around the world today in tropical climates. Known as the "tree of life," the wonderful fruit of the coconut palm is rich in specific fats that have incredible health benefits. Traditional tropical populations that consume a lot of coconut oil are seldom overweight, and traditionally have been free from the modern diseases that afflict most western cultures.

 

The Coconut Diet picks up where traditional diets fail. Low-fat diets don't work. The body needs a proper balance of good fats, but in recent years traditional, healthy saturated fats have been substituted with harmful transfatty acids in the US food industry. We now know that these harmful transfatty acids that are found in most vegetable oils are not the healthy oils they were once thought to be, and they are considered one of the major culprits in modern diseases and obesity. The Coconut DietTM replaces these highly refined harmful fats with one of the healthiest fats known to mankind: coconut oil.

 

The Coconut DietTM is a not one specific diet plan, but a way of life!  Most diet plans are temporary and tell you exactly which foods to eat, how much to eat, how to count calories or carbs, etc. Statistics prove that those starting diet plans are usually doomed to failure before they even start, because while they may temporarily lose weight on specific diet plans, they will almost always regain that weight and more as soon as they stop using the diet plan. Our goal here is to educate you on the truth about how fats and oils affect your weight and health, and give you the knowledge you need to make basic dietary changes in your life that will give you optimal health, and that should continue as long as you live. We have seen traditional people in the tropics follow these dietary principles and live very long, healthy lives with coconut oil as the main dietary oil in their diet. The principles of The Coconut DietTM can be incorporated into any other major diet plan.

 

 

Know Your Fats

The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol

By Mary G. Enig, Ph.D

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/knowyourfats.htm

 

 

This book, written by an international expert, is your definitive source for accurate information on fats, oils, cholesterol, and their nutrition.

 

 Learn how much omega - 3 and omega - 6 fatty acids people really need for optimum health   

 Learn why the body makes saturated fatty acids   

 Learn which saturated fatty acids are conditionally essential. 

 Learn how the functional saturated fatty acids such as lauric acid promote  health   

 Learn how to select the best fats and oils for healthy ease-of-use 

 

Dr. Mary G. Enig, a nutritionist/biochemist of international renown for her research on the nutritional aspects of fats and oils, is a consultant, clinician, and the Director of the Nutritional Sciences Division of Enig Associates, Inc., Silver Spring, Maryland. Dr. Enig, a consultant on nutrition to individuals, industry, and state and federal governments, is a licensed practitioner in Maryland and the District of Columbia. She has served as a Contributing Editor of the scientific journal Clinical Nutrition and a Consulting Editor of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

 

Dr. Enig has authored numerous journal publications, mainly on fats and oils research and nutrient/drug interactions, and is a well-known invited lecturer at scientific meetings and a popular interviewee on TV and radio shows about nutrition. She was an early and articulate critic of the use of trans fatty acids and advocated their inclusion in nutritional labeling. The scientific mainstream is now challenging the food product industry's use of trans-containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

 

She received her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is a Fellow of The American College of Nutrition, a member of The American Society for Nutritional Sciences, and President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association.

 

Know Your Fats is written in easy-to-follow language that anyone can understand, but is also packed with so much research and information that it can be used as a university text book. The back is filled with useful charts on the fatty acid composition of natural foods, including the omega essential fatty acids.

 

 

Virgin Coconut Oil

How it has changed people's lives, and how it can change yours!

by Brian and Marianita Shilhavy

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/book_virgin_coconut_oil.htm

 

  Over 100 personal stories from people using Virgin Coconut Oil!

  Over 75 previously unpublished foundational recipes for the Coconut Diet - ALL using either Virgin Coconut Oil or Coconut Cream Concentrate.

 

* These foundational recipes concentrate on sauces, spreads, and vinaigrettes.

* Developed by a professional chef.

* You can easily add Virgin Coconut Oil into your diet.

 

  Documented research showing why Virgin Coconut Oil has changed so many people's lives.

 

Virgin Coconut Oil: How it has changed people's lives, and how it can change yours! is the most practical book written on the health benefits of coconut oil. Based on years of research and the experience of Brian and Marianita Shilhavy, this book documents how tropical cultures eating a diet high in the saturated fat of coconut oil enjoy long healthy lives. It also shows how a premium Virgin Coconut Oil has changed thousands of lives outside the tropics.

 

 

The Whole Soy Story

by Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN

 

480 pages - Hardcover

Retail: $29.95

Now $16.99

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/whole_soy_story.htm

 

 

The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food

 

The book that tells the truth about soy that scientists know, that you need to know, and that the soy industry has tried to suppress.

 

What others are saying about this blockbuster book:

 

Women should be more afraid of the marketing of soy products than using low dose bio-identical hormones. Kaayla Daniel does a thorough job in presenting the risk factors associated with high dose supplements and soy food products. No woman should take this book lightly, especially if she is interested in maintaining her health.

Larrian Gillespie MD author of The Menopause Diet, and The Gladiator Diet

 

Dr. Kaayla T. Daniel has provided the reader with the most comprehensive review/evaluation of the soy story ever to exist.  This is a 'must read' for the intelligent and concerned consumer of food for themselves and especially for their children and grandchildren.

Mary G. Enig, PhD, FACN author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer For Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholestrtol.

 

Kaayla Daniel exposes soy for what it is, a substance that, when processed, packaged, and marketed by unscrupulous companies --not to mention over-consumed by the public -- becomes a hormone-disrupting drug capable of causing a host of health problems, including thyroid conditions. In "THE WHOLE SOY STORY," Kaayla Daniel dismantles the marketing mythology that sells soy as a health food, replacing it with the fascinating, well-researched, and fully referenced truth about soy's very real health dangers.

Mary J. Shomon Thyroid patient advocate, Author of the bestseller - Living Well With Hypothyroidism: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...That You Need to Know

 

Anyone in America who is interested in safe, healthy nutrition must come to terms with Kaayla T. Daniel's THE WHOLE SOY STORY.  This book is a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the soy industry, whose reputation often seems based as much on self-promotion as science.  Well-written, authoritative, and accessible to the layperson, this is science writing at its best.

Larry Dossey, MD, Author of Healing Beyond The Body, Reinventing Medicine, and Healing Words

 

A trailblazing work.  A must read for anyone who wants to properly nourish themselves and their families.

Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions

 

ABOUT THE WHOLE SOY STORY

 

   The Whole Soy Story blows the lid off nutritional dogma

 

·        Soy is NOT a miracle food.

·        Soy is NOT the answer to world hunger

·        Soy is NOT a disease-preventive panacea.

 

   The Whole Soy Story tells the whole truth about soy.

 

·    The book that is all fact and no fiction

·     The book that will change your diet and may save your life. 

 

For more than a decade, Americans have been fed a steady diet of positive soy news.  Newspapers and magazine editors have run articles with headlines such as “The Joy of Soy” and “The Bean Supreme,” uncritically published news releases from major soy companies, and unquestioningly accepted the recommendations of many "natural health care experts" who claim that soy foods might prevent disease and retard aging.

 

              Lost in the hoopla has been the WHOLE SOY STORY

 

 Not all types of soy foods are good for us

 

 Even good soy products must be eaten in appropriate quantities

 

 Dozens of respected scientists have issued warnings stating that the possible benefits eating soy should be weighed against proven risks.

 

 

In fact, hundreds of epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders, immune system breakdown, and even heart disease and cancer.   Infants on soy formula, vegetarians who favor soy as their main source of protein and adults self-medicating with soy to prevent cancer, heart disease or relieve menopausal symptoms are especially at risk. 

 

The Whole Soy Story presents and interprets the often contradictory evidence on soy and disease to determine what studies are valid, which justify hope, which are mere hype – and why.  

 

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