Later On

Since Chris brought it up in comments, I’ve been reading about coconut oil and learning quite a bit. Coconut oil is mostly a saturated oil and is thus quite stable (it does not oxidize readily at all, unlike polyunsaturated oils). In my reading, it seems that people who consume mostly saturated fats (animal fats, coconut oil) and monounsaturated oils (olive oil) in preference to polyunsaturated oils (canola/rapeseed, corn, soybean, safflower, etc.) age more slowly and fall prey to fewer diseases that stem for the oxidation of oils (e.g., cancer).

It occurred to me that I look pretty young (in terms of my skin), and that a contributing factor could be that I stopped using all polyunsaturated oils years ago because of their bad omega-6 to omega-3 ratios. And I never ate margarine—my mother stuck with butter and thus so did I. Plus margarine tastes like axle grease.

In summary, I am going to start doing some cooking with coconut oil—and my first recipe that I’m still turning around in my mind will involve shrimp and scallions and tarragon. Update: And tiny organic tomatoes and a little garlic, perhaps the juice of a lime. Served on quinoa.

I think the use of coconut oil is worth exploring. It does promote inflammation, according to the USDA database, but OTOH the figure the database gives for the inflammation factor (-1798) was based on using 1 cup of the oil. For a teaspoon, the inflammation factor is –37, which easily can be counterbalanced by other foods—a teaspoon of olive oil, for example, has an inflammation factor of 24, which cancels out most of that.

Plus I take 1/2 tsp turmeric daily, an inflammation factor of 226, “strongly anti-inflammatory.”

Interesting stuff, food.