Originally Posted by Bexicon

Pamela, sorry, I wrote you quite an extensive reply a few days ago about coconut oil then the cat walked on the keyboard and it was lost... I was too annoyed to start over.

If your CO has no smell or taste it might be refined/bleached/deodorized... hopefully not hydrogenated.... but I couldn't say if the benefits would still apply. If you buy something with 'unrefined' and 'virgin' on the label it should smell and taste somewhat of coconut regardless of the brand.

I buy mine at a health food store. I've seen it in every health food store I've ever been in, and it's easier to find the good unrefined stuff... supermarkets often carry the refined version -- if they have it at all. Some people are very picky about brands. I use NOW brand. All unrefined coconut oils can go from solid to liquid and various lumpy stages in between depending on your home, since the melting point is right around room temperature. In the fridge it will become so hard you have to chip pieces off... don't recommend it and it doesn't need to be refrigerated. Almost never goes rancid.

Mary Enig, who has written extensively about coconut oil (you could Google), recommends about 3 tbsp per day... although I often eat that much, some people have reported nausea, diarrhea and sleeplessness taking that much... or at least taking that much without building up to it.

As Daryl mentioned, it is a good oil for high heat, you could look up the smoke point. Whether or not you cook with it depends on whether you like the smell/taste of coconut in the food.... I guess you could consider it like olive oil, it puts its own noticeable stamp on things and though I quite like 'coconut eggs' it's an acquired taste I think

I don't care for it in coffee myself.

Some people like to make a sort of candy bark by mixing it with Splenda and cocoa powder and refrigerating it in a shallow dish. You can of course just eat it on a spoon if you're trying to up your fat intake, if it doesn't make you gag (since I've survived the cherry-flavoured cod liver oil I found everything else a walk in the park.) That's usually what I do, aside from cooking eggs in it I don't use much for cooking because I try to eat fatty meat so I never really need extra oil in the pan unless I'm trying to create a sea of grease.

I think some of the testimonials about the wondrous powers of CO are a bit over the top, especially since they tend to come from sites that sell the stuff, but it is a good healthy fat.

I also find it does wonders for my skin if I put some on every day, and also as an oil treatment for my hair, but as it's expensive it's not too practical to use too much externally. Hope that helps.

Wish we had a proper forum