There have been many claims
made recently on the Internet that there are Virgin Coconut oils in the market that are
processed without heat, and that these coconut oils are somehow superior to
coconut oils that use some heat in the processing. Do these claims have
any merit? Mt. Banahaw Health Products and Tropical Traditions has
thoroughly researched this topic, and following are the results.
Some are claiming that there
are "raw" Virgin Coconut oils that never see heat at temperatures above a
certain temperature (usually slightly over 100 degrees F.) and therefore contain
beneficial enzymes. However, unless one is purchasing a coconut oil that has
been transported from the tropics in refrigerated containers, and is
delivered to you in refrigerated delivery trucks, this is just simply not
possible. To read our full explanation on why one does not want enzymes in
their coconut oil anyway, see our
full explanation here.
Mt. Banahaw Healthy Products
Corp. was the first company to export "Virgin Coconut Oil" from the
Philippines, using the
wet-milling traditional method.
Since those early days, many other producers have now entered into the local
market in the Philippines with a variety of different "Virgin Coconut Oils"
produced in many different ways. So in 2005 Professor Vermont P. Dia of the
University of the Philippines conducted a study with some of his graduate
students to analyze various Virgin Coconut Oils produced using different
methods. Their results were
published in December 2005, in The Philippine Agricultural Scientist, Vol.
88 No. 4, pages 462-475. The title of the article is "Comparative
Physiochemical Characteristics of Virgin Coconut Oil." The results of
this study have become the standard for Virgin Coconut Oil quality in the
Philippines, and were published and implemented by both BFAD (Bureau of Food
and Drugs) and PNS (Philippine National Standards).
They produced three batches
of Virgin Coconut Oil in their laboratory using three different methods, and
also analyzed six different commercial brands of Virgin Coconut Oil in the
Philippines. The three batches they produced in their laboratory were all
produced with little or no heat, some using refrigeration and never going above 47 degrees Celsius
(less than 117 degrees F.) The values that were tested in all these Virgin
Coconuts oils were: melting point, gravity, saponification, iodine, free
fatty acid (FFA), peroxide value, moisture content, fatty acid composition,
tocopherols, and total phenolic content. Their results found that: "while
the VCOs
produced by the three methods and using different varieties had some
differences in chemical and quality properties, these differences may not be
large enough to significantly affect the overall quality of the VCO.
Further, their levels are still within the CODEX standards for coconut oil."
In the 6 commercial brands they tested (where it is routinely assumed today
that "no heat" is better), they found some had values that
exceeded the limits of standards in areas like moisture content and FFA. The
study was concluded by stating: "The effect of higher temperature (>50 C)
during processing on the quality of VCO is likewise important to determine
and is being investigated."
Mt. Banahaw Health Products
Corp.'s Virgin Coconut Oil is not sold in the local Philippine market, as it
is produced exclusively for Tropical Traditions, so we decided to send a
sample to Professor Dia to analyze. We already knew that our VCO
consistently tested well within standards for moisture and FFA (our moisture
levels, for example, have ranged from 0.06 to 0.08 percent in 2006, where
industry standards for refined coconut oils are .10%), but we had never tested for phenolic acid, an antioxidant usually associated with
products like Green Tea and Olive Oil. Some have theorized that it is the
polyphenols in Virgin Coconut Oil that differentiate its quality from regular
refined coconut oil, where polyphenols are generally missing. The three
samples Professor Dia and his students produced in the laboratory, and the
six commercial samples they tested had a range of 6.29 to 8.38 mg gallic
acid of phenolic content per gram of oil. When they tested the VCO of Mt. Banahaw Health
Products Corp., the values were 13.21 to 13.43 mg gallic acid per gram of
oil! (See
Professor Dia's statement on Mt. Banahaw Health Products VCO here.)
We repeated this test several times on different batches of our Virgin
Coconut Oil to verify the high results. In some cases, our phenolic content
was more than twice as high as other Virgin Coconut Oils they had tested. In
2007 we implemented our Gold Label standards for producing Virgin Coconut
Oil, which includes using the water from inside the coconut to extract the
coconut milk that is used to separate out the oil. Since implementing these
Gold Label standards, our levels of antioxidants have increased even more!
In 2008
a
study done in Malaysia and published in the International Journal of Food
Science Nutrition also reported that the wet-milling fermentation method
produced the highest amounts of antioxidants. In 2011, studies conducted in Sri
Lanka by Professor Kapila Seneviratne of the University of Kelaniya
showed that traditionally made virgin coconut oils that use heat in the
process, even high levels of heat such as boiling the coconut milk to
completely separate the oil (a method we do not use), not only does not harm
the oil, but may actually promote the antioxidants to become dispersed in
the oil:
More surprises awaited the research team. The general impression is that
cooking at high temperatures would degrade the quality of the oil.
However, it is not applicable since coconut oil is thermally stable, it is
learnt. “Fortunately, most of the phenolic anti-oxidants present in
coconut oil are also thermally highly stable,” he pointed out, explaining
that the reason for a greater composition of anti-oxidants is that
simmering for a long time at a high temperature dissolved more
anti-oxidants into the oil. (Published in The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka,
October 16, 2011 - "Coconut Oil: It's good for your after all," by
Kumudini Hettiarachchi and Shaveen Jeewandara)
So in terms of empirical
evidence, there is no evidence anywhere that we can find that Virgin Coconut
Oil produced with "no heat" is superior in any way to the traditional method
of producing Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil that is used for the Tropical Traditions
brand of VCO, which has been sold to hundreds of thousands of people in the
US market and around the world for over ten years now. On the contrary, Professor Dia has verified that at least with phenolic content, our VCO tested
higher than any other VCO they had tested in the Philippines, and the
study done in Malaysia in 2008 confirmed that the wet-milling fermentation
method produced the highest levels of antioxidants in Virgin Coconut Oils. Then
in 2011 studies done in Sri Lanka showed that coconut oil produced by
traditional methods and employing heat actually produced results with higher antioxidants than other coconut oils, further
verifying that the traditional method is superior.
To
learn more about how Virgin Coconut Oils are
produced and what separates Tropical Traditions Gold
Label
Virgin Coconut Oil from other mass-produced coconut
oils,
go here.
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