>>I have a question about dfifferent brands of coconut oil and their taste.  I went to my local health food store and they had a couple of brands of coconut oil (either expeller pressed, virgin or extra-virgin).  I asked one of the sales people about the flavor and she said they are all pretty coconut flavored.  I want to make both sweet and savory foods and I cannot imagine coconut flavor going over well in a Italian or Mediterranean dish :).  Can you help with a brand that will fit that need?  I can buy a jar of the other kind for sweet foods and for skin care, etc. <<

This just goes to show that just because someone works in a health food store, they won’t necessarily have accurate knowledge of all products!  Extra virgin is the best quality and will definitely have a coconut flavor.  If it’s expeller pressed, it’s odorless and flavorless.  I use expeller pressed for most of my baking and cooking, when I don’t want a coconut flavor. 

There are apparently differences between the flavors of extra virgin coconut oils, but I’m not very sensitive to the differences.  I’m currently using Golden Barrel expeller pressed and Mountain Herbs extra virgin coconut oil, and am satisfied with them both. I’ve also used Spectrum and Omega extra virgin, and they were also both good.  If anyone would like to share their experience or preferences for certain coconut oils, please do in the comment section below – others considering using and learning about coconut oil will find it helpful!

Avivah

>>Do you think that if I’m drinking 3/4 to 1 gal. of water a day, I’m drinking enough to provide for my newborn?<<

This is just my personal opinion but it sounds fine to me.  For years I’ve heard the recommendation to drink 8 cups of water a day, but I think a better recommendation is to drink half of your body weight in ounces.  Meaning, if you’re 120 pounds, drink at least 60 oz.  There are sixteen cups/ 128 oz in a gallon, so you sound like you’re doing great! 

If a person lives where it’s hot, is very active, or is nursing, they’ll need to increase the amount they drink. And for the immediate days before a fast, it’s also a good idea to increase your daily water intake. 

Avivah

Since I recently wrote a little about some benefits of coconut oil is to your health, maybe you’ve been thinking about including it in your diet but wondering how much to take and how to take it.  The recommendation I’ve generally seen is to take 3.5 – 4 T. daily, spread out throughout the day.  The reason to take it regularly instead of all at one time is it helps to keep your metabolism running strong all day.  However, start with a smaller amount, like a teaspoon at each meal, and slowly build up.  That way your body can get used to it – otherwise you might experience a strong cleansing reaction which is positive for your health but not pleasant.

– Shakes/smoothies (since it chunks up, coconut milk may be more useful)

Mix into hot tea, coffee, milk

Bake with it, using it to replace shortening, margarine, or butter.

Saute or fry foods with it.

Spread it on bread or crackers like butter.

Use it as a salad dressing base, mixed with 50% olive oil so that it will pour more easily and not chunk up when poured on cold salad

Pop popcorn with it.

Make healthy desserts with it – my favorite way is to make healthy chocolate.

Spread it on your skin – it will be absorbed and help nourish you from the outside in!

If you already use coconut oil and have some great ways to enjoy it, please share them with us in the comments section!

Avivah

Several books on nutrition have been mentioned in the comments recently, but not everyone has access to a library that carries the books they’re interested in, or even any library at all!  Dr. Weston Price wrote extensively on his travels in the 1930s to many places where he was able to observe the native culture as well as the effects of modernization on the health of younger generations.  The title of his book is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects.  This book is the starting place for anyone interested in the traditional foods approach to eating, and if this is all you can read, it will be enough.  I thought that some of you would appreciate being able to read it for free online here .   

There’s also a huge amount of information online about this approach to healthful eating, which is what I initially started with and stayed busy with for a long time.  When I was finally able to get the books, I appreciated being able to systematically get the information, since it was cobbled together in my head from here and there.  But there honestly hasn’t been much that I’ve read that came as something totally new after all of my online reading.

I hope this is helpful!

Avivah

Coconut oil is an amazing food, and literally a book could be written (and has been!) on how it works and all the many ways it can benefit your health. Unfortunately it’s gotten an unfair and undeserved rap and people don’t know what an incredible food and health supplement it is.  I’m hesitant to write a post like this because there’s no way I can do justice to the benefits of coconut oil.  But I’ll try to sum up some of what I consider the major points – there’s a lot of research out there if you’re interested in learning more about coconut oil and understanding how it affects the body.

People automatically hear coconut oil and think ‘saturated fat- isn’t that bad for you?’  First of all, saturated fats aren’t bad for you.  I know, it’s hard to believe since that’s not what we hear in the mainstream media.  But the mainstream media is the last place to turn to for accurate information on anything, including nutrition.  Saturated fats actually play a very important role in maintaining your health – consider that for centuries peoples across the globe stayed healthy while eating large amounts of saturated fat, and it’s only since the early 1900s when artificial and processed fats were introduced into people’s diets that we started to see things like heart disease (to be more accurate, I think the very first documented heart attack was in the 1870s but it was still rare until the 1920s).  What’s a problem are fats that are oxidized (ie damaged), which all of the processed polyunsaturated vegetable oils are; it’s these oxidized fats that lead to many of the prevalent diseases of today.

Next, coconut oil is comprised of medium chain fatty acids.  That means that it is processed differently in the body than most fats.  Coconut oil is very easy to digest because medium chain fatty acids don’t require bile salts to be digested.  It contains high amounts of lauric acid, something found abundantly in mother’s milk but otherwise can only be found in large amounts in coconut oil and palm oil (butterfat has a small amount).  Lauric acid converts to monolaurin in your body, which strengthens your immune system and helps fight all kinds of illness.

Coconut oil aids immune function and is a protective antioxidant. It’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral:

• Anti fungal – helps combat candida, athlete’s foot, diaper rash, cradle cap – ds16 used this recently for less than a week and no longer has athlete’s foot, something he’s tried to get rid of for at least two years.  Ds22 months once had diaper rash caused by thrush when he was 9 months old – I put coconut oil on his bottom and it killed the thrush, literally peeling the top layer away and leaving perfect skin underneath.  (When I changed his diaper I found what looked like a layer of dead skin, which was actually the dead fungus – it took only two applications.)  It’s also helpful in combatting cradle cap – rub it into the baby’s scalp.
• Anti – bacterial -bacterial illnesses include throat infections, earaches,  strep
• Anti viral – viruses cause a wide variety of illnesses, and antibiotics aren’t effective in combatting them.  These viruses include the flu, measles, and HIV.

When you’re feeling under the weather, up your intake of coconut oil.  In some parts of the world where coconut oil has been used for generations, it is literally drunk as a tonic when people begin to feel unwell.

Helps expel or kill worms, lice, and parasites – when I thought my toddler ds had worms (dd saw something when changing him but I didn’t see it myself), I put coconut oil on the anus, in addition to giving him raw carrots to eat and increasing his consumption of coconut oil.  We didn’t see any signs of anything after that.

Helps protect liver, supports thyroid function, improves brain function (even found to be helpful for Alzheimer’s patients ).  It is thermogenic – that means it boosts your metabolism and raises your body temperature.  The increased rate of metabolism means that it’s helpful for weight loss and will give you a natural energy boost. If you’re perpetually cold (a sign of thyroid and/or adrenal fatigue), consuming coconut oil will help warm you up.

Skin cleanser – my teens think this is the best anti-acne skin treatment – they use the oil cleansing method, with expeller pressed coconut oil as the oil of choice.

Skin moisturizer – anything you put on your skin goes into your body just as if you ate it, so what you put on your skin is much more important than most people realize.  Not only doesn’t this have chemicals, it has substantial soothing and healing powers. Protects skin from sun, can be used in placed of sunscreen.  Dd14 commented to me on how soft her face feels now after using it as a skin cleanser.

Hair conditioner – use as a deep oil treatment to nourish your hair; leave on overnight and then wash out in the morning.  I’m planning to try this with one of my shaitels sometime soon.

Toothpaste replacement – I sometimes dip my toothbrush in it and use it to brush with (I thought of doing this after noticing coconut oil was a main ingredient in tooth soap).

Base for creams, salves, and more – we made an herbal skin salve and used coconut oil for the base.

Oil pulling – this is the oil I used on the periodic occasions that I do oil pulling.

I’ve seen coconut oil recommended for so many different things that it’s hard to believe one food can be so widely beneficial, but the reason it’s so healthy is because of the factors I listed in the very beginning – being a medium chain fatty acid and rich in lauric acid.

Bruce Fife has written a book about coconut oil that I’d recommend if you’re interested in learning more – The Coconut Oil Miracle.  It’s very easy to read.  He also has a website, and there’s a lot of information online available, if you don’t mind it taking longer to put all the info together.  If you like more technically written books, then Mary Enig is the top lipids researcher in the world and knows her stuff inside out – I haven’t been able to get her book on fats – Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol.  Together with Sally Fallon she’s also written Eat Fat Lose Fat that includes information on coconut oil.  I personally prefer Mary’s writing, but any and all of these books are worth reading.

Avivah

>>I just wanted to let you know that I ordered 5 gallons of  extra virgin coconut oil and after calling Omega, I think I got a good deal. the price was $226.89 with Free shipping and no tax! http://www.organiclivingfood.com/pc-56-1-coconut-oil-virgin-cold-pressed-organic-raw-kosher.aspx

The price of mountain rose herbs is still much better, but they were out. If I remember correctly you weren’t sure about a hechser, but it says they are certified: http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/OQK.html Is it just that you don’t use that hasgacha?<<

Thanks so much for sharing this information!  It can be discouraging to see how expensive coconut oil is, and finding good deals is very helpful.  Even the good deals are a lot of money, though; it helps to remember that when you buy such a large quantity, it will last you a long, long time! (Edited to add – I just called Mountain Rose Herbs and as of today, Friday June 19, it’s back in stock – $149 for 5 gallons, $37 for 1 gallon.)

As far as Mountain Rose Herbs, their price was much better (I don’t know what it is now, and when I checked last week, they were out of stock and the price wasn’t listed).  I called them about the hechsher, and whatever it was, it wasn’t something I’d rely on for most other things. However, extra virgin coconut oil is very minimally processed and even this minimal hechsher was fine (according to those we ‘hold’ by); some say that it doesn’t need any hechsher  – as always, ask your LOR.

Since I’m posting about coconut oil, I’ll share something that’s useful to know for the summertime.  Did you know that by eliminating your intake of harmful oils (like typical vegetable oils such as canola or soy, margarine) and adding coconut oil to your diet, you will improve your skin’s sensitivity to the sun?  A lot of people who were fair and used to burn all the time found that they began to tan instead due to the coconut oil and the beneficial affects on their entire bodies.  If this sounds like an impossible connection to you, then I’d just comment that what goes into our bodies affects every aspect of how they function.  You know the computer term GIGO (‘garbage in, garbage out’)?  It applies very much to people and their health, and though we may not see the direct connection, the connection is there.  If you have bad fats in your diet, do you think that it will affect how your skin reacts to the sun?  Or to aging?  Of course.

I’ve also read that it can be applied as a sunscreen and is effective in that way, too.  Since the skin absorbs what is put on it, this is an equally viable way to use coconut oil (and could be a good option for those who want all the health benefits but don’t like the flavor).  That’s one reason I’ve been opposed to chemical sunscreens for years – I have almost never put them on my kids – all those poisonous chemicals to ‘protect them’ from the sun (especially since I think the sun is beneficial), isn’t a good trade off in my mind.  One year the counselor in my dd’s camp refused to let her swim because she hadn’t brought any sunscreen, and I had to call and tell her that I would take responsibility for the results of my dd swimming for a half hour without sunscreen.  She probably thought I was a neglectful and ignorant parent.  One of my kids did once get a slight sunburn on the back of his neck – it was my ds7, who is the fairest of us all.   That was only once and that was before we made these changes to our diet; though I’ve never used coconut oil as a sunscreen (heard about it after last summer), that’s what I’d use now if I felt there was really a need for it.

One thing I’m not clear about is if expeller pressed coconut oil is as effective as extra virgin in this regard.  It seems like it should be helpful, even if not as beneficial, just as it is when used as a food.  Since the expeller pressed is so much less expensive, I’d rather use that for applications such as these.  If any of you know more about this, please chime in and educate me!

Avivah

>>What is Spirulina powder? what is it made from, nutrients, etc?<<

 Since the site where I bought mine from can describe it much better than I can, I’m going to link to there so you can read what they write about it:  http://www.bulkherbstore.com/Spirulina-Powder.  There are some interesting letters from people about their experiences with spirulina, and one of them was new since I made my order.  She was the second person to write that it helped her with sciatica, and since sciatica is something I struggle with during pregnancy, if I had realized that might have helped me I would have been really purposeful about regularly including it in my diet!

I bought this months ago with the intent to use it daily, but I haven’t.  I just keep forgetting about it!  When I have taken it, it’s been sprinkled on top of food, not in significant amounts.  It would be easier to take in capsules, since 1 teaspoon really changes the look of your food!  Last week I made myself a banana milkshake (bananas, milk, spirulina), and it was a very strong green color – not the most appetizing to look at, but it tasted great!

Regarding putting it in capsules, which would be a very easy way to take it, I started researching kosher capsules when I got the herbs (to fill the capsules myself), and after doing some searching, decided to put it on the back burner.  Most of the capsules have gelatin and it was getting confusing to figure out what was what from different companies.  I could have pushed the checking out more, but it wasn’t important enough at the time to me.  There are always so many things to do and learn about, that it means I can’t do all the things that I’d like to do, so some things inevitably slide to the side.

As far as the kosher status of the spirulina itself, I called the company linked to above to inquire about it (they buy herbs in bulk and repackage them in smaller amounts).  They gave me the contact information for their supplier, who I called to ask about certification.  They told me the name of the rabbi who certified the product and where he was from.  If you’re more comfortable buying from somewhere that has the certification directly on the packaging, there are lots of other sources, both online and in health food stores.

Avivah