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We had a great discussion around the breakfast table on Coconut Oil.  I pass it along to you.  You can put it in Bettina’s Blog, if you like.  Maybe other houses in the Bettina Network of bed & breakfast homes would like to start the discussion around their breakfast tables to see what surfaces.

The conversation came from my having seen a segment of the Dr. Oz show which had Dr. Mercola on as a special guest.  Thanks to you, I now subscribe to Dr. Mercola’s newsletter at mercola.com so he was no stranger when I saw him on Dr. Oz. The topic of Coconut Oil came up and to my surprise, they were very positive about it.

I am from the generation which was told Coconut Oil is bad and you shouldn’t use it ever.  It was put in the category of trans fats and could wreck everything from your heart to you liver to your total health and decrease your life expectancy.  I listened to that, in spite of the fact that my great-grandmother used nothing but Coconut Oil.  I am, you see, from the generation of people who trashed what they were told growing up in favor of what they hear from their peers and the spin on everything the marketing people spread around the globe.  It has taken a couple decades, but I am a reformed family negater and am doing my best to recover the information and wisdom which had been passed on to me by various family members.  The longer I live, the more I am shown their wisdom and information was real and long lasting.  It stood the test of many generations and is still very viable.

I am a part of the women who have just been liberated, who are roughly akin to first generation immigrants who discard their culture, their language, their family’s wisdom in favor of what they find in their new country.  Maybe I have just started to pass that ‘newbie’ space and am moving on to recovering who I am and who the women were in my family.  I owe them a lot, which i did not repay nor acknowledge.  Trying to say thank you as I recover what I’ve almost lost and grieving over my actual losses of the wisdom and stories the woman in my family tried to pass on to me is overwhelming for me right now.  The damage sexism has done to women continues to add-up.  I do my best to hold it up for the next generation to see and understand.

I first came upon Coconut Oil in a new light at my daughters house. They had this huge container of Coconut Oil, which they used for everything.  I was appalled and was sure they were destroying their health and worse, the health of my grandchildren.

When a guest started talking about the Dr. Oz show and Coconut Oil – I had seen the same show and was doing research into Coconut Oil because of the conflict between my daughters using Coconut Oil; the information I was raised with; and the prevailing information about Coconut Oil out in the ether.

Dr. Mercola talked about Coconut Oil being something which possibly could reverse Alzheimer’s.  Which to me meant it could probably also reverse my forgetting nouns and proper names.  The conversation around breakfast was fairly heated because one gentleman decided only people who were uneducated could really seriously consider using Coconut Oil after everything ‘science’ has discovered about ‘these foods’. As he talked I immediately defended Coconut Oil because he set off an old feeling which arises when people talk about ‘these people’.  Is this a minority food?  Is this food threatening to some industry which doesn’t want or like the competition?

I checked out Bettina’s Blog and found we have an article on the blog about massaging after a shower with Coconut Oil.  Wow! Ahead of the curve?

As the conversation progressed, we heard – if the guests were correct – there is no ‘good science’ around Coconut Oil being a very negative food which raises your cholesterol.  The tests which the marketing people push, were done with partially hydrogenated Coconut Oil – so the Oil iself didn’t stand a chance.  The test results were pre-determined to make it look bad.

When one uses Organic, Expeller Pressed and whatever other words were thrown out during breakfast, it turns out Coconut Oil is a good food.  All the words meant that Coconut Oil should be bought and used unadulterated without being processed and without being full of additives or hydrogenated.  So off I went to buy my Coconut Oil and try the massages, adding Coconut Oil to everything I cook – although I can’t quite get into taking four tablespoons of the Oil daily for the Alzheimers cure – it sounded pretty gross and I am hoping that with no Alzheimers nor dementia in the family I will avoid that one.

I should read Bettina’s Blog a little more diligently so I don’t pass over breakfast conversations like the one you put out on Coconut Oil and Massage.  I am going to massage my scalp with Coconut Oil and let it sit for a time before washing my hair.  Maybe it will reverse the beginnings of hair loss I am experiencing.  It can’t do any harm and I am way ahead of the game if my hair starts to grow in thick and shiny and beautiful.  Isn’t that what was used in the Hawaiian Islands for generations – before the U. S. introduced them to all this other stuff – and they were healthy and beautiful people with thick, shiny hair?

Ed Note:  Thank you for this article.  I would like to add a brief conversation we had over breakfast about using Coconut Oil in a Latté by putting it in the milk before the milk has air whipped into it.  The taste is supposed to be excellent, but I must put in the caveat that we have not tried this. The person who told us about this use for Coconut Oil used skim milk.  We are not fans of skim milk because we think it is an unhealthy way to go so when we try it, we will try it with whole milk – raw if possible, as untampered with as we can find if we can’t find raw milk.

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