Ok I know diets are a personal issue, but this week I decided to try to dispel some myths regarding “Fattening Foods”. Still having a good few pounds to lose has actually been handy this week as I’ve been able to attempt to make a point about weight loss by being a human guinea-pig to test out if some commonly-believed ‘fattening’ foods aren’t really quite so fattening after all. I was partly driven to this by comments which I hear frequently from work friends who follow the advice of popular ‘fat-fighting’ clubs such as Slimming World. You see, they call some foods ‘SYNS’. Or more accurately the number of SYNS you are allowed is determined by how much of these sinful-type foods you eat, the idea being that the more ‘Syns’ a food is said to contain, the fatter you will become by eating such foods, or the more it will hinder any hopes of weight loss. Obviously, if processed foods packed with additives, sugars and trans-fats are advised against, then this can only be good, but no, it appears that whole foods such as NUTS, AVOCADOS and COCONUTS are irredeemably sinful and you are sure to become fatter than a pig if you don’t severely limit them.
The ‘Syns online database’ of 39,000 ‘Syn Values’ (!) reveals that ONE AVOCADO has a whopping 12.5 Syns – nearly equivalent to a Mars Bar! So it’s not surprising the number of times I have been helpfully admonished “avocados and nuts are fattening”, and “coconut makes people wider than they are tall”. These common views appear to be held by Zillions of people, and if you’re one of them you’ll probably think I’m crazy. I suppose it’s human nature that if you’re told something by ‘experts’ and it’s then repeated countless times by other sources, you tend to believe it and try to be helpful to others by passing on this ‘expert knowledge’. But the alarming paradox is that these ‘sinful’ foods are considered by many others to be SUPER-FOODS. The Raw-Foodists I know love this kind of stuff and they are some of the healthiest people I’ve met. Can it really be that foods packed with so much nutrition will hinder your weight-loss and likely make you even fatter? I need to find out, but to test it now calls for one thing: LESS TALK – MORE ACTION.
This Self-Imposed Diet is to last 2 weeks, comprising of the said SYNS and more – one whole coconut every day, one or two avocados and a load of nuts every day – VERY SYNFUL - with no limit on proteins, good fats, vegetables and most other natural foods. This is not a crash-diet, in fact having started it, I feel constantly full. The only rule is no processed foods or refined carbohydrates and sugars – the main route causes, I believe, of the current obesity and diabetes epidemics. It’s an easy task – eat a lot more of the foods I love for two weeks. To prove all the SYNS are being consumed, most lunch-times I am seen eating grated coconut, mashed avocado generously sprinkled with brazil, hazel and walnuts, sometimes with a few nice green leaves, pepper or olives. (Mornings - a couple of eggs fried in virgin coconut oil, with mushrooms, tomatoes and leeks. Evenings- meat or fish plus veg dish or curry, blueberries with cream. Drinks – coconut water, coffee with coconut milk or cream). I don’t know how many sins this all adds up to but each lunch-time, Larraine has been saying “I can’t wait for this Thursday when you get on those scales!” Last Thursday she officially weighed me and this Thursday is the first check up to see just how much fatter this synful diet has made me so far. I’m so full from eating this stuff that doubt is creeping in about about whether I’m about to look silly and the reasons why I’m doing this - I want to show that given a choice of nibbling a nice big chunk of fresh coconut or a low-fat (lower-Syn) chocolate bar, the nutrition packed coconut should win every time. A full avocado or a (lower-Syn) low-fat packet of crisps – to me there’s no contest. Can I persuade Slimming World that there is a better way? Unlikely. It appears that their criteria for allocating Syns to a food is based on calorie-density, i.e. the more calories per gram, the higher the Syn value. So accordingly I am doomed by eating this kind of stuff. But if they want to make people healthier, why lump wholefoods together with processed junk? And could this calorie-density hypothesis that they base it all on, be flawed? Their theory sounds logical, but has anyone actually tried Synning on JUST WHOLEFOODS, and if they did would the outcome be any different? Which is why I’m doing this experiment. Not that my experience would be by any means definitive as everyone is different, but at least maybe I can show it IS possible to eat a lot of SYNFUL calorie-dense wholefoods WITHOUT gaining weight. The moment of truth arrives this Thursday……
UPDATE
This was to be a two-week plan but after the first week Thursday arrives - the scales are out and pen and paper are at the ready – I stand on the scales and the red digital numbers shoot up, then a look of disbelief as the scales show…. a loss, yes a loss of six pounds!! I am almost as gobsmacked as Larraine. Let’s see what happens next week…..
UPDATE 2
Back on the scales again this morning, marking the end of this two week experiment. No weight loss, but also no weight gain, so the result is a 6 pound loss in 2 weeks. More than this, I feel more alert, more energetic, digestion is better and even my skin is softer! Who knows who else could experience the same benefits but are missing out because of fear of weight gain from Avocados, Nuts and Coconuts?
Ahhhh…. Fats! First they (the ‘experts’) told us to cut out fats if we want to stay healthy and trim. Then they changed it to: olive oil is good, then fish oils are really good, then seed oils etc etc. Anyway, while the population was following this ‘low-fat’ advice, they became fatter (apart from the French who ignored it all). So I read with interest about a recent study with the aim of settling the big FAT question once and for all. It still amazes me how so many people still equate eating fat with being fat. In all the studies I have read, so far the only fat that is implicated in weight gain is trans-fat. Of course, many readers of this blog already know that coconut oil has been used for centuries by the peoples of the Tropics, who remained remarkably healthy and lean until the arrival of the western diet.
Should we be reconsidering the conventional wisdom on saturated fat? Yes, according to Gary Taubes’s interpretation of the new report in The New England Journal of Medicine on a two-year diet experiment in Israel.
The Israeli researchers found that people on a relatively low-fat diet lost less weight (6 pounds) than those who ate a low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean diet (10 pounds). These relatively modest weight losses were interpreted as discouraging news for dieters, and they also set off a debate on whether the whether the low-carb diet was really an Atkins-style diet, as my colleague Tara Parker-Pope reported.
Mr. Taubes prefers to focus on another aspect of the study: perhaps the best news yet about saturated fat. As I wrote last year, in a column about Mr. Taubes and his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” the medical establishment originally warned people to avoid all kinds of fat, but subsequent studies kept failing to produce evidence of the benefits of a low-fat diet. Then the supposed experts said the villain wasn’t just any fat but specifically saturated fat. But now their recommendations are being undermined yet again by research, Mr. Taubes says. Here’s his take on the new experiment and a series of similar trials:
These trials are fundamentally tests of the hypothesis that saturated fat is bad for cholesterol and bad for the heart. They’re not just about which diet works best for weight loss or is healthiest, but what constitutes a healthy diet, period. (This is the point I made in my Times Magazine story six years ago). Specifically, these low-fat/low-carb diet trials, of which there are now more than half a dozen, test American Heart Association (A.H.A.) relatively low-fat diets against Atkins-like high-saturated-fat diets.
In this last test, the A.H.A. diet was about 30 percent calories from fat, less than 10 percent calories from saturated fat; the low-carb diet was almost 40 percent calories from fat, around 12.5 percent saturated fat. In this particular trial, as in all of them so far, the high-saturated-fat diet (low-carb or Atkins-like) resulted in the best improvement in cholesterol profile — total cholesterol/H.D.L. In this Israeli trial, the high-saturated-fat diet reduced L.D.L. at least as well as the did the A.H.A. relatively low-fat diet, the fundamental purpose of which is to lower L.D.L. by reducing the saturated fat content.
So here’s the simple question and the point: how can saturated fat be bad for us if a high saturated fat diet lowers L.D.L. at least as well as a diet that has 20 to 25 percent less saturated fat?
It could be argued (and probably will be) that the effect of the saturated fat is confounded by the reduction in calories, but the A.H.A. diet also reduces calories and in fact specifies caloric reduction while the low-carb diet does not. It will also be argued, as Dean Ornish does, that the source of the saturated fat was not necessarily meat or bacon, but beans or other healthy sources.
But the nutritional reason why meat has been vilified over the years, is that it’s a source of unhealthy saturated fat. It’s not that meat per se is bad — unless you buy the colon cancer evidence, which has always seemed dubious — it’s that the saturated fat in meat makes it bad. So the argument about the source of the saturated fat is irrelevant.
The question hinges on whether saturated fat raises cholesterol and causes heart disease. One way or the other this trial is a test of that hypothesis. It’s arguably the best such trial ever done and the most rigorous. To me that’s always been the story. If saturated fat is bad for us, then these trials should demonstrate it. They imply the opposite.
Why does the A.H.A. continue to insist that saturated fat should be avoided, if these trials repeatedly show that high saturated fat diets lead to better cholesterol profiles than low-saturated fat diets? And how many of these trials have to be done before the National Institutes of Health or some other august institution in this business re-assesses this question? After all, the reason the food guide pyramid suggests we eat things like butter and lard and meats sparingly (and puts them high up in the pyramid) is that they contain saturated fat. This is also the reason that the A.H.A. wants to lower even further what’s considered the safe limit for saturated fats in the diet.
Is Mr. Taubes right? If eating more saturated fat improved the dieters’ cholesterol profile (while also enabling them to lose weight even though their calories were not restricted), should the federal government and the American Heart Association stop warning people about saturated fats?
I read this lovely phrase recently on the pack of some coconut water and it is so true. The more you look into the subject of nutrition, the more you find that nature has everything there, in pure form, to sustain optimum health in human beings. The phrase explains in a nutshell why billions of dollars have been spent over the past few years in developing the best isotonic sports drinks, only to find the most perfect sports drink has been sitting there, all along, in a green shell. And, this was known all along, by peoples of the tropical nations, who happen to have used it for millennia.
Here’s another crazy example of “Nature is Smarter than Science”:
Did you know that your favourite margarine very likely contains trans fats, even if it is one of those “heart-healthy” types? As you are no doubt aware, trans fatty acids are known to reduce good cholesterol and increase bad cholesterol. They’re now thought to be so harmful, countries are introducing laws to control them and cities are banning them from restaurants. The FDA says “trans fats are harmful and have no known nutritional benefits”.
Labelling laws are changing in the UK so trans fats will soon have to be listed, but until then, here’s a quick way of working out how much trans-fat is in your margarine or biscuits or crisps….: On the nutrition label look for the ‘per 100g’ section, find the ‘Total Fat’ content and deduct the ‘of which Saturates’ figure, then deduct the ‘of which un-saturates’. The figure you are left with is the percentage of trans-fats.
Watch out for clever marketing phrases like “low in trans fats”, which denote their presence, not absence. It’s the process of partial hydrogenation, used to firm-up the vegetable oil, which is responsible for creating trans fats. As so often happens when foods are subjected to processing, what at first seems like productive development turns out to be destructive tampering.
The good news is that there is a vegetable oil spread which tastes delicious and does not contain any trans fats: Virgin Coconut Oil! We recommend this one from the Philippines: www.coconutty.co.uk
Ok.. I admit to an unashamed plug for our products…. but it’s backed by sound facts. Dr Mary G Enig has studied fats for more than 30 years and reveals the scary side of trans fats: “They raise cholesterol levels, reduce the cream content in breast milk, lower immunity to disease and raise blood-insulin levels, thereby heightening the risk of diabetes”. Of coconut oil she states “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.”
So what’s the next big “science about to be out-smarted by nature”? My bet goes on GM crops.
Here’s an update from our Coconut Oil suppliers, just posted on the Cocovida blog by Steve Learmouth. This is a good example of why we deal with this company and why it is very unlikely we would find a more open and honest manufacturer of virgin coconut oil.
On Monday I made a quick trip to our farm in Dolores, with Leilani Limpin, an organic inspector with the Organic Certification Center of The Philippines (OCCP).
I go on and on about the vast majority of coconuts in The Philippines being grown organically, but it is necessary for us to have certification;…….even if it costs a small fortune. The OCCP carries out inspections for Ceres of Germany, an internationally reknowned certification agency. We are requesting organic certification for Europe and North America. Given that our land is totally free of any pesticides and fertilisers, we don’t think there will be a problem.
Of course, Leilani can’t just take our word that no fertilisers or pesticides have been used, she actually has to carry out analysis of the soil, and inspect our production plant. The bottom photograph shows our guys digging to the depth of the tree roots, to collect soil samples. You will notice that Norrie has a hat full of soil, as somebody forgot to bring the bags. (We were lucky we were not asked to dig deeper, otherwise they would have discovered the body of our printer, Albert.)
There are very few small virgin coconut oil producers who are able to have their farms certified organic. Believe me, this is very sad, because invariably, they are the producers of by far the finest VCO. The factory producers have absolutely no problem getting any certification they want, but then produce poor quality oil. We decided that, as our oil is 100% organic, we should be certified as such. We will also be requesting certification for our coconut sugar.
Whilst we were on the farm, I took another photograph of Mel’s mother’s house. How that place has withstood the recent floods and typhoons, I will never know. Nanay is now 75…ish, (she has no idea when she was born), and loves nothing better than to stay on the farm, where she has spent most of her life. In UK estate agent jargon, the place could be said to have “olde worlde charm”, and be “perfect for the DIY enthusiast”, but it is only held up by a couple of rotting logs and two tubes of “No More Nails”. When Cocovida becomes a multi-national conglomerate, I am going to build Nanay something special on her farm, but I doubt she will ever let anybody knock down her “home”.
The analysis report? It just shows what all our customers already know; we make exceedingly good raw virgin coconut oil. The lauric figure of 54%, is not a one-off; this is our average figure, as you will find if you look at our other reports posted on this blog. Please also note the medium chain fatty acid total of 66% (lauric, capric and caprylic). We started getting this higher figure when we moved to Samar.
There are other companies that claim higher figures than us……..but they never manage to publish their analysis reports.
(For more Cocovida updates please visit http://cocovida-coconutoil.blogspot.com/)
Well, 34 actually (and counting). At the Natural Health shows and exhibitions, every so often I get asked.. “coconut oil? what do you use coconut oil for?” I’m really glad when people ask that question because I’m sure there’s at least one good thing they could use coconut oil for; I just hope they’re not after one quick answer. Based on customer feedback, personal experience and Google, here’s an ever growing list of some of the uses for coconut oil…
(Internal) eat off spoon, health supplement, use in diets (low-carb/low-GI/dairy free/vegan), smoothie base, baking, roasting, spread (replace butter/margarine), shallow frying, deep frying, make raw chocolate, use in baby formula; (External) facial moisturiser, body oil, hand cream, foot balm, massage oil, emollient, hair oil (detangler), lip-balm, bath oil, pre-wash hair conditioner, scalp treatment, suntan lotion, aftersun lotion, natural lubricant, makeup remover, toothpaste (add baking soda+clove), healthy pets (use in diet and on coat), soap base, shaving oil, deodorant; (Strange But True) chain lube, bio-fuel (diesel replacement), surfboard polish.
If you’d like to add to the list above, please post a comment.
If you’re looking for a list of health benefits, I suspect such a list would be even longer, but believe it or not it’s illegal to claim any health benefits according to the Food Labelling Regulations 1996 (unless tested by MHRA which currently costs over £100,000 per item). How they get away with it on the telly I just do not know… However, if this blog weren’t linked to a website which SELLS coconut oil www.coconutty.co.uk, it would likely be allowed. So if you want to learn more about the health benefits I would check out Dr Bruce Fife’s excellent information-only website www.coconutresearchcenter.org. I’m sure he has an equally long list of health benefits, oh hang on I’ve just checked - he has 51! Let’s get our list increased so we can beat him!
The first Coconut Party (ever?) took place on Friday. Wow, what a night! Not knowing what to expect when they received their invites, it was amazing that so many enthusiastic guests turned up. Even more amazing was how readily everyone embraced coconut health and wellbeing. Being nine months since the first shipment from the Philippines, this felt like the birth of Coconutty. We’ll definitely be planning a few more parties very soon!
If you’ve got any friends with an interest in natural health, let us know and we’ll come round. Stock will even be available on the night.
November has been a busy one doing shows, getting Coconutty parcels out and making plans for new product launches in 2008. At the beginning of the month, I thought I’d over stocked, but yet again demand has soared and all the coconut oil ran out. (You would think having a surname like Stockwell would mean that I’d never get caught out). So apologies to Cocovida in the Philippines for the short notice they always get!
As the weather draws colder I’m doing more shows indoors but hope to get back out at the Leeds Farmers market and Leeds Mosaic market sometime in the new year. The atmosphere at these markets is great and the quality of the organic and fair-trade produce is outstanding. Apologies to regular customers, I will definitely be back outside when the weather warms up a bit!
For the latest show dates and coconut products please see www.coconutty.co.uk
It’s always great to get feedback and to hear how customers have put their CocoNutty products to use. The coconut grater is a personal favourite of mine and this post has given me some more ideas about what should go on the CocoNutty stall in the run up to winter. Thanks Amy!
From http://www.overseassingaporean.sg:80/forums/index.php?showtopic=767&st=20
“I prepared this morning Ondeh-Ondeh for coffee time later. Since it is my husband’s favourite, I doubled the recipe and managed to get about 36 pieces (which I think that it should be more than enough for my two boys!).
I used fresh coconut which I grated using my new “toy” - a coconut grater which I ordered directly from UK. For those who are interested to know how this coconut grater looks like or operates, please check the following website:
We would like to wish our coconut oil suppliers, Cocovida, all the best at the Megatrade Hall, Mandaluyong next week as part of the annual Coconut Festival. In the unlikely event that you happen to be in Manila from the 23rd to the 26th, please go over to Megamall and say hello!
COCO WEEK CELEBRATION AT MEGAMALL
The Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) takes the lead in celebrating the National Coconut Week on August 24-30, 2007. The annual event was pursuant to Proclamation No.142 issued by then President Corazon Aquino in 1986. This celebration aims to impress on the public the richness in the coconut industry in terms of product versatility and applications and in its manpower resources, the greater number coming from the more than 3.5 million coconut farmers and farm workers.
Highlight of the celebration this year is a coconut festival on August 23-26 at the SM Megatrade Hall 1, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City. The four-day festival features a trade fair-exhibit which provides the different industry stakeholders - producers, suppliers, traders, prospective investors and consumers - a venue to interact. Special events like seminars on various topics, product and book launchings, and techno and cooking demos will be held during the trade fair-exhibit days.
- Quoted from International Coconut News from The United Coconut Associations of the Philippines, Inc. (UCAP)
Mel Learmouth, Cocovida CEO, giving a speech at last year’s event.
