American hails coconutas healthiest oil on earthPosted:11:43 PM (Manila Time) May 23, 2004By Cesar C. Villariba, ContributorInquirer News ServiceThe Healing Miracles of Coconut OilBy Bruce Fife, N.D.Piccadilly Books, Ltd.
BRUCE Fife, an American, has gone coconuts over coconuts. He says the tropical oil is the healthiest dietary oil on earth.He will bring his message-"Coconut oil does not produce cholesterol"-in a series of lectures May 28-30.A certified nutritionist and naturopathic physician, Fife was overwhelmed by the outcome of his research on the much disparaged coconut oil, and has compiled the voluminous medical data into a practical readable book, "The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil."Published at the turn of the millennium, it is just what this coconut country needs to turn around the yarn spun 20 years ago by a threatened soybean-oil industry, which took advantage of the Americans' fear of saturated fat being linked to heart disease.
War of oils
Fife's book is a veritable historical account of the rise and fall of coconut oil on the American dining table-the first and, probably, the last word on the subject from an American perspective.In the "war of oils," he says the American food industry swallowed the negative report on the coconut hook, line and sinker, despite a lack of sufficient research to establish a definitive link between coconut oil and heart disease. Coconut and palm oils were replaced with hydrogenated soybean oil in processed food.Voices from the scientific community and coconut oil's nutritional uses since ancient times, were drowned out in the media campaign orchestrated by the American Soybean Association.Fife says the losers in the war are the consumers because hydrogenated oil turned out to be unhealthy when chemically altered.Fife's book was already on its second edition in 2003 before it slowly gained the interest of skeptical Filipinos still hurting from constant coconut-bashing for decades.Not even the subtopic "AIDS prevention and treatment" in the chapter on "Coconut oil as medicine," which reported on the first clinical study by Filipino pharmacologist Dr. Conrado Dayrit on the use of coconut oil in treating patients with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, made the book an instant hit among Filipinos.Then SARS-Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-came along.The use of virgin coconut oil against deadly viruses gained national attention at a Senate inquiry when brought up by Dr. Dayrit's son, Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit. But it was Fife's book that rescued Dayrit's study on the use of coconut oil against HIV from oblivion.The recorded benefits of the coconut as food and as medicine have just started to pile up that they can no longer be ignored even by a skeptical medical profession.The book contains what we already knew as folkloric anecdotes but which Western science never got to validate until recently. Today coconut oil is used in hospital formulas around the world to feed critically ill patients and is a major component of baby formulas.
Dr. Coconut in Manila
In this age of rising health challenges, it takes an American author to reawaken Filipinos, who have also doubted the wisdom of using their own produce, to the wonders of the tree of life they have in abundance.Fife has taken his advocacy to the lecture circuit. After "The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil," he has written "The Coconut Lovers Cookbook," earning him the monicker "Dr. Coconut." He has also written 18 books on nutrition education."Dr. Coconut" will talk in a symposium and roundtable discussion during the International Food Exhibition on May 29 at the World Trade Center complex. Local nutrition and health practitioners will have an opportunity to clarify the medical researches Fife mentions in his book in the morning symposium at the Philippine Trade and Training Center (PTTC).The public may catch the author in a roundtable discussion in the afternoon at the exhibition lecture hall
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