Coconuts and Coconut Oil

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

From being a child, I have always loved the taste of coconut in any form or guise (especially if it’s enrobed in chocolate, like a Bounty Bar !).

When I was young we lived across the river from Battersea Park Fun fair, in London – now long gone, sadly – and I remember my father winning a coconut at the coconut shy. We took the hairy, brown object home where my father drilled holes in the three marks at one end and we carefully drained the clear liquid, which we shared. It tasted exotic, but I’m not sure either my brother or I really liked the taste of it or not … what we were waiting for was for the nut to be cracked open for us to get at the milky white flesh.

I seized any opportunity to consume the meat – usually desiccated and with chocolate ! We went to ABC Bakery, opposite Peter Jones in the Kings Road, and chose from the enticing selection behind the child finger-marked glass, not far below our eye-line : Coconut bites, coconut delights, coconut pyramids, coconut macaroons, a flaky pastry with whirls of sweetened shredded coconut that fell off into the white paper bags and that I kept till later and ate in my room, chocolate & marshmallow snowballs covered in desiccated coconut …

It’s true that the most easily accessible coconut was usually dried and associated with huge amounts of sugar.  I do seem to recall that you could find whole nuts in supermarkets fairly easily, but I kept them for so long that either the water had dried up by the time I thought of a recipe to use it (why I couldn’t just have drunk it, I have no idea) or the flesh was starting to dry out by the time I had mustered the enthusiasm for trying to separate the meat from the shell.

Since then coconuts became another sinful delight – because scientists in the ’70s & ’80s found them to contain the highest amount of saturated fat of any oils.  So, I forsook large amounts of fresh coconut for ‘naughty’ smaller amounts of dried sugary stuff !  At the same time, believing they were protecting us from the terrible health effects of consuming products with such high saturated fats, manufacturing companies substituted coconut oil with trans fats … do you see where I’m heading with this ?

Coconut oil can be produced in a variety of ways and the oil that was tested in the ’70s and ’80s was partly hydrogenated, which creates trans fats, and not virgin coconut oil, which has a totally different health risk profile.

I became aware that perhaps coconuts had been given rather a harsh negative health profile when I came across the use of young coconut meat and coconut water in many recipes for eating raw, about eight years ago.  Frustrated that I would never be able to try out these delicious-sounding recipes, because of where I live, I contented myself with buying unsweetened shredded coconut to make banana bread and other more ‘healthy’ sweet treats and using canned coconut milk for Asian curries.

Whilst I was in a local organic produce shop I came across a small jar of virgin coconut oil which I experimented with in stir fries and then bought a second jar which I kept in the bathroom and used on my skin.  During the Summer months, when temperatures inside the house can reach above 26°C (78.8°F) the oil is liquid but at the moment it is a solid mass.

I was delighted when I started googling the benefits of virgin coconut oil and found that it is probably one of the best oils to use when frying because it is heat-stable, this also means it is slow to oxidise and resistant to rancidity, plus lots of other positive information.

The FDA, WHO, British NHS, American Heart Association and other health organisations around the world still recommend limiting the consumption of significant amounts of coconut oil due to its high levels of saturated fat.  However, as our understanding increases, newer studies have now shown that coconuts and their oil have many health benefits that include :

• Promoting heart health (!)
• Supporting proper function of the thyroid
• Strengthening the immune system
• Anti-microbial properties

With so much information available on the internet and masses of ‘white noise’ we are constantly bombarded with conflicting information.  I think it is true that we will find what we want to read or hear about something.

I want to believe that natural products must be better for us than over-processed and manufactured and for me, the news that it is really more than ok for me to indulge in coconut again is just the best !  In the back of my mind I’m thinking that the next time I move it will be to one of the countries where coconut palms abound … thinking white sand and crystal turquoise seas.

But, probably the best adage is ‘Moderation in all things’.