Virgin Coconut Oil and Heat

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 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!

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 six 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. We suspect that some low-level heat is necessary to remove any existing enzymes or bacteria from the oil that can compromise the integrity of pure unrefined Virgin Coconut Oil.

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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