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COCONUT FOR GOOD HEALTH -
Mike Foale, Brisbane – November 2007
A TRADITIONAL FOOD ITEM The coconut fruit is a very important part of the tropical diet around the world. The water and flesh of the nut have traditionally provided nutrition and energy, enabling indigenous people to enjoy good health and physical strength. On many islands over half the daily energy intake is in the form of coconut kernel and coconut cream. NICHE IN WESTERN RECIPES Coconut is known outside the tropics mainly through the popularity of desiccated coconut in cakes (eg lamingtons and macaroons) and chocolate bars (eg Bounty brand), and of coconut milk and cream supplied canned in our supermarkets for use in “Asian cooking”. Fresh shredded coconut is a delightful accompaniment in green salads but rarely seen. A HEALTH FOOD In recent years there has been a “re-discovery” of coconut health benefits to folk in developed countries through the use of virgin coconut oil (VCO). This has been extracted in producing countries direct from the partly dried kernel, or separated from coconut milk (pressed from shredded fresh kernel). VCO is expensive but those who can afford it report many benefits including a raised energy level, lowered blood pressure, and relief from skin infections and many internal complaints. There are many web-sites that present the story of coconuts and health, eg FRESH WHOLE NUTS As fresh coconuts are available in most supermarkets and many fruit shops in Australia, ready access to the kernel (which contains about 33% of coconut oil) would enable the consumer readily to gain direct access to another source of the health-giving oil. Consuming 100 grams of kernel provides 33 grams of oil – a daily amount that many report to be highly beneficial to health. Super-market nuts contain 400 to 500 g of fresh kernel. A HOSTILE MARKET-PLACE There is a general aversion to coconut oil among health professionals who have been much influenced by the campaign waged over several decades by the producers of unsaturated vegetable oils, especially soy (but also canola, maize and sunflower) to oust coconut oil from the food market-place. Coconut oil has many different “fatty acid” components that are chemically “saturated”, and in some circumstances these components raise the level of cholesterol in blood serum. However, there is good cholesterol (HDL) that works as an antidote to bad cholesterol (LDL) and generally the balance of these remains stable when coconut oil is part of the diet and combined with other sources of fat. GENUINE HEALTH BENEFITS Most of the fatty acids in coconut oil are converted rapidly to energy so that the consumer feels more energetic. That response often also results in the “burning” of some fat from reserves in the body, so that weight is lost. Obesity and heart disease are rare among those consuming a traditional coconut diet in the tropics. Coconut oil is also credited with reduction of inflammation in the body - especially of the inner lining of major blood vessels, lowering of blood pressure, and suppression of both external and internal infections and soreness of the joints. Rather than being unhealthy it contributes very much to the improved health and welfare of the user. GAINING ACCESS TO THE BOUNTY OF THE COCONUT VCO is available in many health food shops, but supermarkets (which stock DC and coconut cream) and specialist fresh fruit shops supply only fresh mature coconuts, mostly imported from the south Pacific. Not only is fresh coconut a source of coconut oil but it also contains valuable protein and fibre and has the wonderful coconut flavour. A RISKY BUY Fresh coconuts come without a “use-by” date and marketers struggle to sustain a high proportion of useable nuts. Stale nuts have lost much of the juice found in the coconut and often are infected through the porous shell with fungal and bacterial organisms that cause rotting. The kernel may still be white but the flavour has become sour. FINDING GOOD NUTS IN THE SUPER-MARKET The device known as Cocosplit has been developed to enable easy splitting of the nut into neat halves, in order to check that the kernel and remaining water are still useable. Supermarkets might consider using Cocosplit to screen out unuseable nuts and market the sound halves together or separately. Purchase of a fresh half nut would be an attractive option for the “first time” coconut user who would be uncertain about buying a whole nut. Whereas a half nut can be guaranteed to be fresh an unopened nut is a risk, as it is very difficult to know for sure if a whole nut is sound. HOW LONG WOULD A HALF-NUT REMAIN FRESH ON DISPLAY A half nut with a plastic film wrapping would remain fresh for several hours at the ambient temperature of the market. Ideally the marketer would anticipate likely sales for a half day and then monitor the display so that additional nuts could be split as needed throughout the day. The Cocosplit tool makes splitting so simple that rapid stocking up of the display is possible. Unsold half nuts would be refrigerated overnight and the first to be sold the next day. A wrapped half-nut has a shelf life in the fridge of three days. If the wrapping is removed refrigeration dries the surface of the white kernel extending shelf life to five days, but the drying kernel is less attractive. The customer would value that information. INCREASED SALES Increased sales would be very likely once half nuts were made available, as regular buyers would be confident with the product and new buyers would be less hesitant through seeing just what they were getting. Promotion of the good food values of coconut would be more effective when the customer knows the purchase is of good quality. Hints for the use of tools to extract the kernel from the half nut would be valued by the first-time customers.
Coconut in the human diet – an excellent component Mike Foale, CSIRO, Brisbane Concern about loss of income from coconut production stems largely from a loss of value of coconut-derived products. Our crop was “trapped” for more than a century in an industrial mode, supplying copra for oil to be used as a feed stock in European and north American food and manufacturing (soap, detergent) industry. Then coconut oil was largely rejected as food in favour of rival edible oils in particular, relegating it largely to the lower value detergent and soap industries. This is a travesty of one of nature’s most beneficial foods and coconut industries everywhere must turn their attention urgently to informing the market-place, to restore sanity to the status of coconut in human affairs. Consuming coconut oil in a pure form is highly beneficial to human health, energy and well-being. This conclusion can be drawn from the central place of coconut in the traditional diets for coastal people for hundreds of generations. European navigators visiting coconut coasts from the 15th century onwards were amazed at the health and strength of the inhabitants whose very simple diets were based on coconuts and fish. Urbanisation and loss of this essential combination of ingredients has seen great deterioration of health and well-being in many of those regions. Not only have coconut foods and fish become more scarce, as the population has grown, but medical advice, under the influence of a marketing push by rival oils, has been to eliminate coconut from the diet. Rather than improve heart health, as claimed by those processing poly-unsaturated fats, there is published evidence of an increase in problems of heart and circulatory health in both India and Sri Lanka. The challenge to coconut marketers and policy-makers is to overcome the “cringe” away from coconut that has grown under the pressure of advertising and misguided health advice. The origin of coconut’s troubles was in the “saturated oil hypothesis” generated in the USA to explain the rise in cardio-vascular disease in the mid-20th century. Experiments with laboratory animals showed that a diet rich in coconut oil (which contains 92% saturated fatty acids – see the table) led to an increase in cholesterol and vascular disease, compared to a diet rich in soy oil, which is mostly unsaturated. The original experiment was done before the role of what are now known as “essential omega-3 fatty acids” had been discovered. As it happens there is no omega-3 component in coconut oil while there is some in soy oil. The most reliable source of omega-3 is fish oil, which explains why the traditional combination of coconut and fish had supported such good health. The experimental animals, which showed degenerative vascular disease in the experiment, were suffering from an acute deficiency of omega-3. In order to overcome the bias against coconut oil we need constantly to remind the potential user that coconut was traditionally a winner, and that there are thousands of recent case histories of coconut use by people in the industrialised world, that have shown great benefit to health. One of the more recent health challenges in industrialised countries is obesity, which now seems clearly to be related to overuse of carbohydrate combined in many cases with the use of trans fats in the diet, and the accompanying mal-function of the insulin mechanism for its disposal in the bloodstream. Excess carbohydrate leads to increased fat deposition and also to increased hunger resulting in over-eating. Many users have found that coconut oil, which contains a mix of fatty acids quite different from any other oil except that of the oil-palm kernel (see table), can bring about loss of weight (due to increased rate of energy “burning” in the body), an increase in energy and vitality (mediated by overcoming suppressed thyroid function), and often suppression of internal and external infections by bacteria, yeast and fungi. The list of potential benefits of coconut oil included here summarises these benefits. It is important to remember that raw coconut kernel and the derived coconut cream and milk are rich in coconut oil which delivers its benefits in these forms as well as in the form of pure oil. There are some books and web pages listed below, which provide supporting information for the claims made in this article. See in particular “The healing miracles of coconut oil” by Bruce Fife (amazon.com), the discussion group at coconut-info.com, Chapter 11 of my book “The coconut odyssey – the bounteous possibilities of the tree of life” (publish.csiro.au), and the web pages: westonaprice.org; coconutresearchcenter.org; and kokonutpacific.com.au. Dr Mary Enig, a lipid chemist formerly of the University of Maryland has written extensively about the chemistry of edible oils. See particularly her book “Know your fats”. In recent years there has come onto the market so-called virgin coconut oil. The term “virgin” has been borrowed from other oil industries but essentially it refers to the first pressing of oil from the raw material. Such coconut oil has been prepared in different ways (eg: fermentation of coconut milk and natural separation; low temperature drying and pressing). This oil is consumed directly, in an amount up to 50 ml per day, by many looking for a health benefit, and it also provides a high quality raw material for drinks, cooking, lotions, soaps and shampoos. The price in the market has the potential to return to the coconut producer up to ten times the income that can be earned from copra. Once this price correction has been made for many producers as the market expands, the coconut economy will be rejuvenated. All the problems of inadequate funding for research into production issues such as genetic improvement, protection against pests and diseases, nutrition to get maximum production from palms, and production system management, would disappear.
Further Reading about coconut products and health http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2053994.htm http://ultracoconutoil.com/tipsandfreebies.htm www.cocotap.com |
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THE NATURAL CHOICE