Oil of life

Several times I tried to fall in line to buy a cone of coconut milk ice cream sold from a Mamang Sorbetero push cart but the line was, oh, so long, I gave up. But there were other coconut products that were just as inviting and interesting—lip balm, moisturizers, bath soap, non-dairy creamer, diesel additives, vinegar, all kinds of food. And of course, virgin coconut oil (VCO) which was the centerpiece of the 2005 National coconut Week 4th National Coconut Festival held at SM Megamall last weekend.

A booth selling coconut milk extractors using the centrifugal method was giving a Powerpoint presentation with Harry Belafonte’s popular coconut song as background score. “Coconut!”

Produced in different parts of the country, VCO came in various labels and packaging--ethnic, sophisticated, dignified, classy. But the integrity of the product should be the same.

There is a lot of work to be done in order to put (or put back) Philippine coconut products on the world’s dining tables, medicine shelves, beauty bars and gas stations.

Well, as the Philippine Coconut Authority had announced, VCO exports are up 268 percent from the same period last year; up 569 percent in export earnings from the first five months of last year. That is from the good news article by Christine Gaylican of the Inquirer’s Business Section.



For themselves and for their country, coconut product entrepreneurs, discoverers, innovators, developers, promoters, users, supporters, scientists, and those nuts about coconuts gathered last weekend at the trade fair and exhibit. It was their way to show that they were pushing on and forward, never mind the political climate in this benighted nation.

I couldn’t help thinking a naughty thought—these VCO producers should send their quarrelling solons a bottle each of crystal clear VCO to clear their clogged colons.

I was at the fair for the book launching of “The Truth About Coconut Oil: The Drugstore in a Bottle” (Anvil Publishing) by Dr. Conrado S. Dayrit, eminent pharmacologist-internist, cardiologist, author, professor and unrelenting medical researcher. He has helped restore to coconut oil its stolen global glory and put it back in its rightful place in the realm of food and medicine. That was last Sunday’s Inquirer Magazine cover story on Dayrit (“Rx for Life: Use your coconut”) which I wrote. The nice coconut-y cover photo of the energetic, ruddy-cheeked 86-year-old Dayrit was by August dela Cruz.

There was not enough space in that article for Dayrit’s , painstaking, groundbreaking work and discoveries about coconut oil because I had to focus on the amazing person. So now, more on the amazing oil.

The background of all these was the fact that saturated fats, coconut oil in particular, were being blamed as the cause of increased cholesterol levels that led to heart disease. This was the gist of the so-called Lipid Diet-Heart Theory propounded by the West. Dayrit now bashes that as “brainwashing”. Attempts to prove that theory wrong were either ignored or suppressed because the American seed oil industry had everything to gain from the demise of coconut oil.

Coconut oil is now regaining its good name, thanks to Dayrit and his counterparts in scientific research that have proven that coconut oil, a saturated fat, is a medium-chain fatty acid (MCFA), not long chain like what is found in animal fats and other oils. “No oil in God’s whole creation can compare with it in its numerous actions,” Dayrit says with pride. We need no longer wonder why many Asians had been using this wonder oil for generations until the badmouthing and blacklisting began.

But despite the strong lobbying by the US seed oil industry, some researchers managed to research on MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) which contain capric and lauric acids and succeeded in getting them accepted as nutritious food for infants and premature babies, convalescents, the elderly as well as athletes. The US Food and Drug Administration even classified them as safe.

Writes Dayrit: “S.A. Hashim, Andre Back, Vigen K. Babayan and their associates were the first to publish papers in the ‘60s and ‘70s that showed that the absorption, distribution and metabolism of (MCFA) differ radically from long chain fatty acids. The MCFAs of coconut oil are rapidly absorbed, carried by the portal vein to the liver and then oxidized, thus producing energy very rapidly.

“John Kabara, professor of microbiology at Michigan State University, discovered that the lauric acid of coconut oil, particularly its monoglyceride, was the post potent antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal agent of all the various fatty acids from different fats and oils that he tested in his laboratory.”

Dayrit did his own work. Dr. Bruce Fife (author of “The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil”) wrote: “Dr. Dayrit was the first to demonstrate, under controlled clinical conditions, that coconut oil could be of benefit to HIV-infected individuals. His landmark 1998 study established the fact that coconut oil alone could lower the viral load of HIV-infected patients and improve their overall health.”

Dayrit’s book is a treasure trove of scientific information (chemistry, statistics) as well as true-to-life testimonials.

“This book had to be written,” Dayrit says, “to tell medical practitioners, nutritionists, and peoples of Asia in particular, the true story of coconut oil, its numerous health benefits and why it has been maligned all these years. And to be fair, the good and the bad of other fats and oils need to be told.”

Get a copy. (Also available at the five-day book fair at World Trade Center near CCP.)You won’t be sorry. And thank God for the gift of the glorious coconut.