Nutiva Organic Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil

How coconut oil is processed is the key to optimizing its taste, texture, color, and aroma. Within two hours of Nutiva's coconuts being chopped, the oil is cold-pressed at below 104 degrees. Contrast this with 99 percent of the coconut oil used today in cooking and body care. First, the coconut is chopped and left to dry in the sun for days. Then the meat is scooped out and sent thousands of miles to giant oil mills where the oxidizing coco meat is refined, bleached, and/or deodorized. Ironically, this product is often labeled as "certified organic.”

There is no comparison between Nutiva's raw, extra-virgin Organic Coconut Oil, with its light taste, pleasant aroma, and pure white color, and industrialized coconut oil, with its bland taste, faint aroma, and off-white color. Please note that any tiny brown specks found at the bottom of Nutiva's Coconut Oil are from the coconut fiber and are indigenous to extra-virgin coconut oil.

Since the 1960s, coconut oil has been mistakenly described as unhealthy. The media reported on studies finding that tropical coconut oils were laden with artery-clogging fats. What went unreported was the fact that the coconut oil used in the studies was hydrogenated—not the virgin oil used for centuries as a staple food.

Coconut oil is about 50 percent lauric acid, a rare medium-chain fatty acid found in mother's milk that supports healthy metabolism and is now being studied for its anti-fungal, anti-viral, and anti-bacterial health-protecting properties. Overall, coconut oil contains 92% saturated fats, and only 1% Omega-6, the fat Americans get way too much of.