Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Coconut Oil and Medium-Chain Triglycerides
All fats and oils are composed of fat molecules called fatty acids. There are two methods of classifying fatty acids. The one you are most familiar is based on saturation. You have saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. The second method of classification is based on molecular size or length of the carbon chain in the fatty acid. You have short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), medium-chain fatty acids(MCFA), and long-chain fatty acids (LCFA). Another term you will often see in reference to fatty acids is triglyceride. Three fatty acids joined together make a triglyceride, so you may have short-chain triglycerides (SCT), medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), or long-chain triglycerides (LCT).
The vast majority of the fats and oils you eat, whether they are saturated or unsaturated or come from an animal or a plant, are composed of long-chain triglycerides. Probably 98 to 100% of all the fats we eat consist of LCT. Coconut oil is unique because it is composed predominately of MCT. The size of the fatty acid is extremely important because physiological effects of medium-chain fatty acids in coconut oil are distinctly different from the long-chain fatty acids more commonly found in our diet. It's the MCT in coconut oil that make it different from all other fats and for the most part gives it its unique character and healing properties. Almost all of the medium-chain triglycerides used in research, medicine, and food products come from coconut oil.
Have you or someone you know ever been in a serious car accident? I mean serious enough that you had to be rushed to the hospital and spend time in the intensive care unit. Or maybe you've come down with a life-threatening illness. Or perhaps due to age you've been hospitalized to treat some degenerative condition. In any of these situations, whether you lived or died depended on the care you received in the hospital. Often this required you to be fed intravenously or through a tube. In the intensive care unit there would be others, some suffering from complications from genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis or epilepsy and perhaps even premature infants struggling to survive their first few weeks of life. In each of these cases you and these other patients can give some of the credit for your recovery to coconut oil. Yes, in one form or another, coconut oil was part of your treatment.
Regardless of the condition, recovery requires good nutrition. Food scientists have long noted the nutritional benefits of medium-chain triglycerides. MCT from coconut oil are used in hospital formulas to feed the very young, the critically ill, and those who have digestive problems. It makes up a vital part of the solutions fed to patients intravenously or through a tube inserted down the throat. If you were ever given formula as a baby you took advantage of the health-promoting properties of coconut oil. MCT from coconut oil have been added to baby formula for decades.
MCT are easily digested, absorbed, and put to use nourishing the body. Unlike other fats, they put little strain on the digestive system and provide a quick source of energy necessary to promote healing. This is important for patients who are using every ounce of strength they have to overcome serious illness or injury. It's no wonder why MCT are added to infant formulas. Actually, whether you were breast or formula fed as an infant you consumed MCT. Why? Because MCT are not only found in coconut oil but are natural and vital components of human breast milk. MCT are considered essential nutrients for infants as well as for people with serious digestive problems like cystic fibrosis. Like other essential nutrients, you must get them directly from the diet.
One of the first scientifically recognized benefits of MCT is the unique manner in which they are digested and utilized by the body. These fats provide nutritional benefits that can improve overall health of both the sick and the well, the young and the old. Even athletes are now using them to boost performance and control weight. Unfortunately, few foods nowadays contain MCT; the best source is coconut oil. By adding coconut oil to your diet you can literally eat your way to better health.
Digestion and Nutrient Absorption
For at least five decades researchers have recognized that the MCT were digested differently than other fats. This difference has had important applications in the treatment of many digestive and metabolic health conditions and since that time MCT have been routinely used in hospital and baby formulas.
The digestive health advantages of MCT) over LCT are due to the differences in the way our bodies metabolize these fats. Because the MCT molecules are smaller, they require less energy and fewer enzymes to break them down for digestion. They are digested and absorbed quickly and with minimal effort.
MCT are broken down almost immediately by enzymes in the saliva and gastric juices so that pancreatic fat-digesting enzymes are not even essential.1 Therefore, there is less strain on the pancreas and digestive system. This has important implications for patients who suffer from digestive and metabolic problems. Premature and ill infants especially whose digestive organs are underdeveloped, are able to absorb MCT with relative ease, while other fats pass through their systems pretty much undigested. People who suffer from malabsorption problems such as cystic fibrosis, and have difficulty digesting or absorbing fats and fat soluble vitamins, benefit greatly from MCT. They can also be of importance to people suffering from diabetes, obesity, gallbladder disease, pancreatitis Crohn's disease, pancreatic insufficiency, and some forms of cancer.
As we get older our bodies don't function as well as they did in earlier years. The pancreas doesn't make as many digestive enzymes, our intestines don't absorb nutrients as well, the whole process of digestion and elimination moves at a lower rate of efficiency. As a result, older people often suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Because MCT are easy to digest and improve vitamin and mineral absorption they should be included in the meals of older people. This is easy to do if the meals are prepared with coconut oil.
In the digestive system MCT are broken down into individual fatty acids (MCFA). Unlike other fatty acids, MCFA are absorbed directly from the intestines into the portal vein and sent straight to the liver where they are, for the most part, burned as fuel much like a carbohydrate. In this respect they act more like carbohydrates than like fats.2
Other fats require pancreatic enzymes to break them into smaller units. They are then absorbed into the intestinal wall and packaged into bundles of fat (lipid) and protein called lipoproteins. These lipoproteins are carried by the lymphatic system, bypassing the liver, and then dumped into the bloodstream, where they are circulated throughout the body. As they circulate in the blood, their fatty components are distributed to all the tissues of the body. The lipoproteins get smaller and smaller, until there is little left of them. At this time they are picked up by the liver, broken apart, and used to produce energy or, if needed, repackaged into other lipoproteins and sent back into the bloodstream to be distributed throughout the body. Cholesterol, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat are all packaged together into lipoproteins and carried throughout the body in this way. In contrast, medium-chain fatty acids are not packaged into lipoproteins but go to the liver where they are converted into energy. Ordinarily they are not stored to any significant degree as body fat. Medium-chain fatty acids produce energy. Other dietary fats produce body fat.
Because of the above advantages, coconut oil has been a lifesaver for many people, particularly the very young and the very old. It is used medicinally in special food preparations for those who suffer digestive disorders and have trouble digesting fats. For the same reason, it is also used in infant formula for the treatment of malnutrition. Since it is rapidly absorbed, it can deliver quick nourishment without putting excessive strain on the digestive and enzyme systems and help conserve the body's energy that would normally be expended in digesting other fats. Medium-chain triglycerides comprise a major ingredient in most infant formulas commonly used today.
Metabolism and Energy
Eating foods containing MCT is like putting high octane fuel into your car. The car runs smoother and gets better gas mileage. Likewise, with MCT your body performs better because it has more energy and greater endurance. Because MCFA are funneled directly to the liver and converted into energy, the body gets a boost of energy. And because MCFA are easily absorbed by the energy-producing organelles of the cells, metabolism increases. This burst of energy has a stimulating effect on the entire body.
The fact that MCT digest immediately to produce energy and stimulate metabolism has led athletes to use them as a means to enhance exercise performance. Studies indicate this may be true. In one study, for example, investigators tested the physical endurance of mice who were given MCT in their daily diet against those that weren't. The study extended over a six-week period. The mice were subjected to a swimming endurance test every other day. They were placed in a pool of water with a constant current. The total swimming time until exhaustion was measured. While at first there was little difference between the groups of mice, those fed MCT quickly began to out-perform the others and continued to improve throughout the testing period.3 Tests such as this demonstrated that MCT had the ability to enhance endurance and exercise performance, at least in mice.
In another study using humans, conditioned cyclists were used. The cyclists pedaled for three hours. During the last hour they were each given a beverage to drink. Those who received beverages containing MCT out performed the others. Because of studies like these many of the sports drinks and energy bars sold at health food stores contain MCT to provide a quick source of energy.
It's easy to see why athletes would be interested in gaining greater endurance and energy, but what about non-athletes? MCT can do the same for them. If eaten regularly MCT can provide a boost in energy and performance of daily activities. Would you like to increase your energy level throughout the day? If you get tired in the middle of the day or feel you lack energy, adding coconut oil to your daily diet may provide you with a much needed boost to help carry you through.
Besides increasing your energy level, there are other very important benefits that results from boosting your metabolic rate: it helps protect you from illness and speeds healing. When metabolism is increased, cells function at a higher rate of efficiency. They heal injuries quicker, old and diseased cells are replaced faster, and young, new cells are generated at an increased rate to replace worn-out ones. Even the immune system functions better.
Several health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and osteoporosis are more prevalent in those people who have slow metabolism. Any health condition is made worse if the metabolic rate is slower than normal, because cells can't heal and repair themselves as quickly. Increasing metabolic rate, therefore, provides an increased degree of protection from both degenerative and infectious illnesses.
Nature's Perfect Food
Among all the foods in nature there is one that stands head and shoulders above all the rest. That food is mothers' milk. Milk was designed by nature to supply all the nutrients a baby needs for the first year or so of life. It contains a perfect blend of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats for optimal growth and development. Without question breast milk is one of the wonders of nature.
Children who are breastfed not only take in important nutrients from the milk, but they also receive antibodies and other substances necessary to protect them against childhood illnesses such as ear infections, later in life. Breastfed children are healthier than those who are not. They have better teeth and jaw formation, they are less prone to allergies, have better digestive function, and are better able to fight off infectious disease. Research suggests that breastfed children may even develop higher intelligence. Recognizing the superiority of nature, scientists have attempted to make baby formula match mother's milk as closely as possible.
An important component of breast milk is medium-chain fatty acids, principally lauric acid. Lauric acid is also the primary saturated fatty acid found in coconut oil. Apparently nature thought it essential to the baby's health to include it. Nature has a reason for everything it does. It doesn't do things, such as putting MCT in milk, just for the fun of it.
Some of the important reasons medium-chain fatty acids are included in milk are improved nutrient absorption and digestive function. As noted earlier, pancreatic enzymes aren't even necessary to digest them. They also help to regulate blood sugar levels. Another very important function is that medium-chain fatty acids protect the baby from harmful microorganisms. The baby's immature immune system is supported by the antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic properties of these vital fatty acids. In fact, without these unique saturated fats, the baby would probably not survive long. It would become malnourished and highly susceptible to a myriad of infectious diseases.
Milk Quality and MCT
Milk that is rich in medium-chain fatty acids is vital for the healthy growth and development of the child. For this reason, MCT are added to most, if not all, baby formulas. Yet, these fatty acids are not exactly the same as those found naturally in mother's milk.
Just as the fatty acid content and quality of formula can be altered, so can human breast milk. Breast milk is, without question, the best choice of food for babies. Not all breast milk is the same however. The quality of the milk is influenced by the mother's health and diet. Breast milk is made from the nutrients the mother consumes. If she doesn't eat the right amount of nutrients, her body will pull them out of her own tissues. If the mother is deficient in these vital nutrients herself, then the milk she produces will also be deficient. Similarly, if she eats foods containing toxins (such as trans fatty acids) her milk may contain them as well. Eating wisely is very important for pregnant and nursing women and their babies.
The mammary glands produce small amounts of all the medium-chain fatty acids, vital components in human breast milk. They are there because they are easy for an infant's immature digestive system to absorb and utilize. They help give the baby the nutrients and energy it needs to grow and develop properly. Because they also have antimicrobial properties they give the infant some degree of protection against viruses such as HIV and herpes, bacteria such a chlamydia and H. pyloris, fungi such as Candida and protozoa such as giardia.
Both animal and human studies have shown MCT to be an important component in mother's milk for the proper growth and development of their offspring. For example, when pregnant and lactating pigs were fed diets containing either long-chain fatty acids (vegetable oil) or medium-chain fatty acids (coconut oil) there was a pronounced difference in the survival and growth rates. The piglets whose mothers received the MCT grew faster and healthier and had a survival rate of 68% compared to 32%. This was particularly true with piglets which were born underweight.5
The same thing appears to happen in humans. For example, coconut oil was added to the formula of 46 very low-birthweight babies to see if supplementation was capable of enhancing their weight gain. The group with the coconut oil gained weight quicker. The weight gain was due to physical growth and not fat storage.6 The babies gained more weight and grew better with the coconut oil because their bodies were able to digest it easily. The vegetable oils, to a great extent, passed through their digestive tracts undigested and thus deprived them of the fat calories they needed for proper development. MCT not only allow infants to absorb needed fats but they improve the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, and protein.7,8
Human milk fat has a unique fatty acid composition. The primary fat is saturated, comprising about 45-50 percent of the total fat content. The next most abundant fat is monounsaturated which makes up about 35 percent of the milk fat. Polyunsaturated fat comprises only 15-20 percent of the total. A significant portion of the saturated fat in human breast milk can be in the form of MCT. Sadly, many mothers produce very little. This can have dramatic consequences on the health of their children.
If breast milk does not contain enough MCT, an infant can suffer from nutritional deficiency and become vulnerable to infectious illness. Therefore, it is important that mother's milk contain as much MCT as nature will allow. This can be done with diet. Given an ample supply of food containing medium-chain fatty acids, a nursing mother will produce a milk rich in these health-promoting nutrients.9 While cow's milk and other dairy products contain small amounts, the foods richest in medium-chain fatty acids are the tropical oils, principally coconut oil.
The levels of these antimicrobial fatty acids can be as low as 3 to 4 percent, but when nursing mothers eat coconut products (shredded coconut, coconut milk, coconut oil, etc.) the levels of MCT in their milk increase significantly. For instance, eating 40 grams (about 3 tablespoons worth) of coconut oil in one meal can temporarily increase the lauric acid in the milk of a nursing mother from 3.9% to 9.6% after 14 hours.10 The content of caprylic and capric acids are also increased. "This gives an important benefit," says Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. an expert in lipid chemistry and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. "The milk has increased amounts of the protective antimicrobials lauric acid and capric acid, which gives even greater protection to the infant." If the mother consumes coconut oil every day while nursing, the medium-chain fatty acid content will be even greater.
Preparation by the mother should start before the baby is born. Pregnant women store fat to be used later in making their milk. After the baby is born the fatty acids stored in the mother's body and supplied by her daily diet are used in the production of her milk. If she has eaten and continues to eat foods which supply ample amounts of MCFA, particularly lauric acid and capric acid (the two most important antimicrobial medium-chain fatty acids), her milk will provide maximum benefit to her baby. These mothers can have as much as 18 percent of the saturated fatty acids in their milk in the form of lauric and capric acids.
If the mother did not eat foods containing MCT and does not eat them while nursing, her mammary glands will only be capable of producing about 3 percent lauric acid and 1 percent capric acid. Her child will lose a great deal of the nutritional benefits as well as the antimicrobial protection the infant could have otherwise had.
Protection from Illness
One of the major characteristics of human breast milk is its ability to protect infants from a myriad of infectious illnesses during a time when their immune systems are immature and incapable of adequately defending themselves. The protective antimicrobial substances in milk that protect the child from a world teaming with infectious germs and parasites are the MCFA. There are some illnesses that even an adult with a healthy immune system may have difficulty fighting off. If the baby is not protected with an adequate amount of MCT in his or her milk, exposure to such an infection could result in serious illness.
When a nursing mother is infected with such an illness, her child is also vulnerable. Mothers infected by certain viruses can pass the infection on to their infants through breastfeeding. In these cases breastfeeding is not recommended. This is particularly true when the mother is infected with a dangerous virus such as HIV. Recent research has shown that mothers who include a source of lauric acid, such as coconut oil, in their diets have lower risk of infecting their nursing infants. The presence of the MCT in the milk lowers the level of the virus in the milk and thus helps lower the risk of transmission of the disease.
While HIV-infected mothers are usually advised not to breastfeed their young for fear that the virus may be transferred, there is no feasible option in some parts of the world. Many women in resource-poor areas do not have the financial means to buy infant formula. Breastfeeding is really their only option. Adding coconut products and coconut oil to the mother's diet is the only practical defense these women have against passing the AIDS virus to their children.
It has been recommended that HIV-infected mothers who are breastfeeding consume 24-28 grams/day of lauric acid and 3-4 grams/day of capric acid to prevent the transfer of the virus. Since coconut oil is nearly 48 percent lauric acid and 7 percent capric acid, this requirement would be met if the mother ate about 50-55 grams of coconut oil each day. A tablespoon is equivalent to 14 grams. So 31/2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day would provide the recommended amount of both lauric and capric acids.
Other viral infections such as those that cause measles, herpes, mononucleosis, and such are also a threat to nursing infants. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can help protect their children by eating an abundant amount of coconut oil or products that contain coconut oil, such as shredded coconut or coconut milk.
Any mother or expectant mother who desires a healthy, well-developed baby should consider adding coconut oil to her diet. She will not only assure better health for her children but will benefit greatly herself.
MCFA are vital nutrients and protectors found naturally in human milk. They are deadly enough to kill the AIDS virus yet gentle enough to nourish a premature infant to health. As we grow to adulthood and beyond, our bodies begin to wear down. MCFA can help nourish and protect us, as it does infants, from infectious and degenerative disease. It appears that coconut oil provides many health benefits to those who are very young and those who are very old and all those in between!
http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/article10612.htm
The vast majority of the fats and oils you eat, whether they are saturated or unsaturated or come from an animal or a plant, are composed of long-chain triglycerides. Probably 98 to 100% of all the fats we eat consist of LCT. Coconut oil is unique because it is composed predominately of MCT. The size of the fatty acid is extremely important because physiological effects of medium-chain fatty acids in coconut oil are distinctly different from the long-chain fatty acids more commonly found in our diet. It's the MCT in coconut oil that make it different from all other fats and for the most part gives it its unique character and healing properties. Almost all of the medium-chain triglycerides used in research, medicine, and food products come from coconut oil.
Have you or someone you know ever been in a serious car accident? I mean serious enough that you had to be rushed to the hospital and spend time in the intensive care unit. Or maybe you've come down with a life-threatening illness. Or perhaps due to age you've been hospitalized to treat some degenerative condition. In any of these situations, whether you lived or died depended on the care you received in the hospital. Often this required you to be fed intravenously or through a tube. In the intensive care unit there would be others, some suffering from complications from genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis or epilepsy and perhaps even premature infants struggling to survive their first few weeks of life. In each of these cases you and these other patients can give some of the credit for your recovery to coconut oil. Yes, in one form or another, coconut oil was part of your treatment.
Regardless of the condition, recovery requires good nutrition. Food scientists have long noted the nutritional benefits of medium-chain triglycerides. MCT from coconut oil are used in hospital formulas to feed the very young, the critically ill, and those who have digestive problems. It makes up a vital part of the solutions fed to patients intravenously or through a tube inserted down the throat. If you were ever given formula as a baby you took advantage of the health-promoting properties of coconut oil. MCT from coconut oil have been added to baby formula for decades.
MCT are easily digested, absorbed, and put to use nourishing the body. Unlike other fats, they put little strain on the digestive system and provide a quick source of energy necessary to promote healing. This is important for patients who are using every ounce of strength they have to overcome serious illness or injury. It's no wonder why MCT are added to infant formulas. Actually, whether you were breast or formula fed as an infant you consumed MCT. Why? Because MCT are not only found in coconut oil but are natural and vital components of human breast milk. MCT are considered essential nutrients for infants as well as for people with serious digestive problems like cystic fibrosis. Like other essential nutrients, you must get them directly from the diet.
One of the first scientifically recognized benefits of MCT is the unique manner in which they are digested and utilized by the body. These fats provide nutritional benefits that can improve overall health of both the sick and the well, the young and the old. Even athletes are now using them to boost performance and control weight. Unfortunately, few foods nowadays contain MCT; the best source is coconut oil. By adding coconut oil to your diet you can literally eat your way to better health.
Digestion and Nutrient Absorption
For at least five decades researchers have recognized that the MCT were digested differently than other fats. This difference has had important applications in the treatment of many digestive and metabolic health conditions and since that time MCT have been routinely used in hospital and baby formulas.
The digestive health advantages of MCT) over LCT are due to the differences in the way our bodies metabolize these fats. Because the MCT molecules are smaller, they require less energy and fewer enzymes to break them down for digestion. They are digested and absorbed quickly and with minimal effort.
MCT are broken down almost immediately by enzymes in the saliva and gastric juices so that pancreatic fat-digesting enzymes are not even essential.1 Therefore, there is less strain on the pancreas and digestive system. This has important implications for patients who suffer from digestive and metabolic problems. Premature and ill infants especially whose digestive organs are underdeveloped, are able to absorb MCT with relative ease, while other fats pass through their systems pretty much undigested. People who suffer from malabsorption problems such as cystic fibrosis, and have difficulty digesting or absorbing fats and fat soluble vitamins, benefit greatly from MCT. They can also be of importance to people suffering from diabetes, obesity, gallbladder disease, pancreatitis Crohn's disease, pancreatic insufficiency, and some forms of cancer.
As we get older our bodies don't function as well as they did in earlier years. The pancreas doesn't make as many digestive enzymes, our intestines don't absorb nutrients as well, the whole process of digestion and elimination moves at a lower rate of efficiency. As a result, older people often suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Because MCT are easy to digest and improve vitamin and mineral absorption they should be included in the meals of older people. This is easy to do if the meals are prepared with coconut oil.
In the digestive system MCT are broken down into individual fatty acids (MCFA). Unlike other fatty acids, MCFA are absorbed directly from the intestines into the portal vein and sent straight to the liver where they are, for the most part, burned as fuel much like a carbohydrate. In this respect they act more like carbohydrates than like fats.2
Other fats require pancreatic enzymes to break them into smaller units. They are then absorbed into the intestinal wall and packaged into bundles of fat (lipid) and protein called lipoproteins. These lipoproteins are carried by the lymphatic system, bypassing the liver, and then dumped into the bloodstream, where they are circulated throughout the body. As they circulate in the blood, their fatty components are distributed to all the tissues of the body. The lipoproteins get smaller and smaller, until there is little left of them. At this time they are picked up by the liver, broken apart, and used to produce energy or, if needed, repackaged into other lipoproteins and sent back into the bloodstream to be distributed throughout the body. Cholesterol, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat are all packaged together into lipoproteins and carried throughout the body in this way. In contrast, medium-chain fatty acids are not packaged into lipoproteins but go to the liver where they are converted into energy. Ordinarily they are not stored to any significant degree as body fat. Medium-chain fatty acids produce energy. Other dietary fats produce body fat.
Because of the above advantages, coconut oil has been a lifesaver for many people, particularly the very young and the very old. It is used medicinally in special food preparations for those who suffer digestive disorders and have trouble digesting fats. For the same reason, it is also used in infant formula for the treatment of malnutrition. Since it is rapidly absorbed, it can deliver quick nourishment without putting excessive strain on the digestive and enzyme systems and help conserve the body's energy that would normally be expended in digesting other fats. Medium-chain triglycerides comprise a major ingredient in most infant formulas commonly used today.
Metabolism and Energy
Eating foods containing MCT is like putting high octane fuel into your car. The car runs smoother and gets better gas mileage. Likewise, with MCT your body performs better because it has more energy and greater endurance. Because MCFA are funneled directly to the liver and converted into energy, the body gets a boost of energy. And because MCFA are easily absorbed by the energy-producing organelles of the cells, metabolism increases. This burst of energy has a stimulating effect on the entire body.
The fact that MCT digest immediately to produce energy and stimulate metabolism has led athletes to use them as a means to enhance exercise performance. Studies indicate this may be true. In one study, for example, investigators tested the physical endurance of mice who were given MCT in their daily diet against those that weren't. The study extended over a six-week period. The mice were subjected to a swimming endurance test every other day. They were placed in a pool of water with a constant current. The total swimming time until exhaustion was measured. While at first there was little difference between the groups of mice, those fed MCT quickly began to out-perform the others and continued to improve throughout the testing period.3 Tests such as this demonstrated that MCT had the ability to enhance endurance and exercise performance, at least in mice.
In another study using humans, conditioned cyclists were used. The cyclists pedaled for three hours. During the last hour they were each given a beverage to drink. Those who received beverages containing MCT out performed the others. Because of studies like these many of the sports drinks and energy bars sold at health food stores contain MCT to provide a quick source of energy.
It's easy to see why athletes would be interested in gaining greater endurance and energy, but what about non-athletes? MCT can do the same for them. If eaten regularly MCT can provide a boost in energy and performance of daily activities. Would you like to increase your energy level throughout the day? If you get tired in the middle of the day or feel you lack energy, adding coconut oil to your daily diet may provide you with a much needed boost to help carry you through.
Besides increasing your energy level, there are other very important benefits that results from boosting your metabolic rate: it helps protect you from illness and speeds healing. When metabolism is increased, cells function at a higher rate of efficiency. They heal injuries quicker, old and diseased cells are replaced faster, and young, new cells are generated at an increased rate to replace worn-out ones. Even the immune system functions better.
Several health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and osteoporosis are more prevalent in those people who have slow metabolism. Any health condition is made worse if the metabolic rate is slower than normal, because cells can't heal and repair themselves as quickly. Increasing metabolic rate, therefore, provides an increased degree of protection from both degenerative and infectious illnesses.
Nature's Perfect Food
Among all the foods in nature there is one that stands head and shoulders above all the rest. That food is mothers' milk. Milk was designed by nature to supply all the nutrients a baby needs for the first year or so of life. It contains a perfect blend of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats for optimal growth and development. Without question breast milk is one of the wonders of nature.
Children who are breastfed not only take in important nutrients from the milk, but they also receive antibodies and other substances necessary to protect them against childhood illnesses such as ear infections, later in life. Breastfed children are healthier than those who are not. They have better teeth and jaw formation, they are less prone to allergies, have better digestive function, and are better able to fight off infectious disease. Research suggests that breastfed children may even develop higher intelligence. Recognizing the superiority of nature, scientists have attempted to make baby formula match mother's milk as closely as possible.
An important component of breast milk is medium-chain fatty acids, principally lauric acid. Lauric acid is also the primary saturated fatty acid found in coconut oil. Apparently nature thought it essential to the baby's health to include it. Nature has a reason for everything it does. It doesn't do things, such as putting MCT in milk, just for the fun of it.
Some of the important reasons medium-chain fatty acids are included in milk are improved nutrient absorption and digestive function. As noted earlier, pancreatic enzymes aren't even necessary to digest them. They also help to regulate blood sugar levels. Another very important function is that medium-chain fatty acids protect the baby from harmful microorganisms. The baby's immature immune system is supported by the antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic properties of these vital fatty acids. In fact, without these unique saturated fats, the baby would probably not survive long. It would become malnourished and highly susceptible to a myriad of infectious diseases.
Milk Quality and MCT
Milk that is rich in medium-chain fatty acids is vital for the healthy growth and development of the child. For this reason, MCT are added to most, if not all, baby formulas. Yet, these fatty acids are not exactly the same as those found naturally in mother's milk.
Just as the fatty acid content and quality of formula can be altered, so can human breast milk. Breast milk is, without question, the best choice of food for babies. Not all breast milk is the same however. The quality of the milk is influenced by the mother's health and diet. Breast milk is made from the nutrients the mother consumes. If she doesn't eat the right amount of nutrients, her body will pull them out of her own tissues. If the mother is deficient in these vital nutrients herself, then the milk she produces will also be deficient. Similarly, if she eats foods containing toxins (such as trans fatty acids) her milk may contain them as well. Eating wisely is very important for pregnant and nursing women and their babies.
The mammary glands produce small amounts of all the medium-chain fatty acids, vital components in human breast milk. They are there because they are easy for an infant's immature digestive system to absorb and utilize. They help give the baby the nutrients and energy it needs to grow and develop properly. Because they also have antimicrobial properties they give the infant some degree of protection against viruses such as HIV and herpes, bacteria such a chlamydia and H. pyloris, fungi such as Candida and protozoa such as giardia.
Both animal and human studies have shown MCT to be an important component in mother's milk for the proper growth and development of their offspring. For example, when pregnant and lactating pigs were fed diets containing either long-chain fatty acids (vegetable oil) or medium-chain fatty acids (coconut oil) there was a pronounced difference in the survival and growth rates. The piglets whose mothers received the MCT grew faster and healthier and had a survival rate of 68% compared to 32%. This was particularly true with piglets which were born underweight.5
The same thing appears to happen in humans. For example, coconut oil was added to the formula of 46 very low-birthweight babies to see if supplementation was capable of enhancing their weight gain. The group with the coconut oil gained weight quicker. The weight gain was due to physical growth and not fat storage.6 The babies gained more weight and grew better with the coconut oil because their bodies were able to digest it easily. The vegetable oils, to a great extent, passed through their digestive tracts undigested and thus deprived them of the fat calories they needed for proper development. MCT not only allow infants to absorb needed fats but they improve the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, and protein.7,8
Human milk fat has a unique fatty acid composition. The primary fat is saturated, comprising about 45-50 percent of the total fat content. The next most abundant fat is monounsaturated which makes up about 35 percent of the milk fat. Polyunsaturated fat comprises only 15-20 percent of the total. A significant portion of the saturated fat in human breast milk can be in the form of MCT. Sadly, many mothers produce very little. This can have dramatic consequences on the health of their children.
If breast milk does not contain enough MCT, an infant can suffer from nutritional deficiency and become vulnerable to infectious illness. Therefore, it is important that mother's milk contain as much MCT as nature will allow. This can be done with diet. Given an ample supply of food containing medium-chain fatty acids, a nursing mother will produce a milk rich in these health-promoting nutrients.9 While cow's milk and other dairy products contain small amounts, the foods richest in medium-chain fatty acids are the tropical oils, principally coconut oil.
The levels of these antimicrobial fatty acids can be as low as 3 to 4 percent, but when nursing mothers eat coconut products (shredded coconut, coconut milk, coconut oil, etc.) the levels of MCT in their milk increase significantly. For instance, eating 40 grams (about 3 tablespoons worth) of coconut oil in one meal can temporarily increase the lauric acid in the milk of a nursing mother from 3.9% to 9.6% after 14 hours.10 The content of caprylic and capric acids are also increased. "This gives an important benefit," says Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. an expert in lipid chemistry and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. "The milk has increased amounts of the protective antimicrobials lauric acid and capric acid, which gives even greater protection to the infant." If the mother consumes coconut oil every day while nursing, the medium-chain fatty acid content will be even greater.
Preparation by the mother should start before the baby is born. Pregnant women store fat to be used later in making their milk. After the baby is born the fatty acids stored in the mother's body and supplied by her daily diet are used in the production of her milk. If she has eaten and continues to eat foods which supply ample amounts of MCFA, particularly lauric acid and capric acid (the two most important antimicrobial medium-chain fatty acids), her milk will provide maximum benefit to her baby. These mothers can have as much as 18 percent of the saturated fatty acids in their milk in the form of lauric and capric acids.
If the mother did not eat foods containing MCT and does not eat them while nursing, her mammary glands will only be capable of producing about 3 percent lauric acid and 1 percent capric acid. Her child will lose a great deal of the nutritional benefits as well as the antimicrobial protection the infant could have otherwise had.
Protection from Illness
One of the major characteristics of human breast milk is its ability to protect infants from a myriad of infectious illnesses during a time when their immune systems are immature and incapable of adequately defending themselves. The protective antimicrobial substances in milk that protect the child from a world teaming with infectious germs and parasites are the MCFA. There are some illnesses that even an adult with a healthy immune system may have difficulty fighting off. If the baby is not protected with an adequate amount of MCT in his or her milk, exposure to such an infection could result in serious illness.
When a nursing mother is infected with such an illness, her child is also vulnerable. Mothers infected by certain viruses can pass the infection on to their infants through breastfeeding. In these cases breastfeeding is not recommended. This is particularly true when the mother is infected with a dangerous virus such as HIV. Recent research has shown that mothers who include a source of lauric acid, such as coconut oil, in their diets have lower risk of infecting their nursing infants. The presence of the MCT in the milk lowers the level of the virus in the milk and thus helps lower the risk of transmission of the disease.
While HIV-infected mothers are usually advised not to breastfeed their young for fear that the virus may be transferred, there is no feasible option in some parts of the world. Many women in resource-poor areas do not have the financial means to buy infant formula. Breastfeeding is really their only option. Adding coconut products and coconut oil to the mother's diet is the only practical defense these women have against passing the AIDS virus to their children.
It has been recommended that HIV-infected mothers who are breastfeeding consume 24-28 grams/day of lauric acid and 3-4 grams/day of capric acid to prevent the transfer of the virus. Since coconut oil is nearly 48 percent lauric acid and 7 percent capric acid, this requirement would be met if the mother ate about 50-55 grams of coconut oil each day. A tablespoon is equivalent to 14 grams. So 31/2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day would provide the recommended amount of both lauric and capric acids.
Other viral infections such as those that cause measles, herpes, mononucleosis, and such are also a threat to nursing infants. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can help protect their children by eating an abundant amount of coconut oil or products that contain coconut oil, such as shredded coconut or coconut milk.
Any mother or expectant mother who desires a healthy, well-developed baby should consider adding coconut oil to her diet. She will not only assure better health for her children but will benefit greatly herself.
MCFA are vital nutrients and protectors found naturally in human milk. They are deadly enough to kill the AIDS virus yet gentle enough to nourish a premature infant to health. As we grow to adulthood and beyond, our bodies begin to wear down. MCFA can help nourish and protect us, as it does infants, from infectious and degenerative disease. It appears that coconut oil provides many health benefits to those who are very young and those who are very old and all those in between!
http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/article10612.htm
Coconut Oil and Medium-Chain Triglycerides
All fats and oils are composed of fat molecules called fatty acids. There are two methods of classifying fatty acids. The one you are most familiar is based on saturation. You have saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. The second method of classification is based on molecular size or length of the carbon chain in the fatty acid. You have short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), medium-chain fatty acids(MCFA), and long-chain fatty acids (LCFA). Another term you will often see in reference to fatty acids is triglyceride. Three fatty acids joined together make a triglyceride, so you may have short-chain triglycerides (SCT), medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), or long-chain triglycerides (LCT).
The vast majority of the fats and oils you eat, whether they are saturated or unsaturated or come from an animal or a plant, are composed of long-chain triglycerides. Probably 98 to 100% of all the fats we eat consist of LCT. Coconut oil is unique because it is composed predominately of MCT. The size of the fatty acid is extremely important because physiological effects of medium-chain fatty acids in coconut oil are distinctly different from the long-chain fatty acids more commonly found in our diet. It's the MCT in coconut oil that make it different from all other fats and for the most part gives it its unique character and healing properties. Almost all of the medium-chain triglycerides used in research, medicine, and food products come from coconut oil.
Have you or someone you know ever been in a serious car accident? I mean serious enough that you had to be rushed to the hospital and spend time in the intensive care unit. Or maybe you've come down with a life-threatening illness. Or perhaps due to age you've been hospitalized to treat some degenerative condition. In any of these situations, whether you lived or died depended on the care you received in the hospital. Often this required you to be fed intravenously or through a tube. In the intensive care unit there would be others, some suffering from complications from genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis or epilepsy and perhaps even premature infants struggling to survive their first few weeks of life. In each of these cases you and these other patients can give some of the credit for your recovery to coconut oil. Yes, in one form or another, coconut oil was part of your treatment.
Regardless of the condition, recovery requires good nutrition. Food scientists have long noted the nutritional benefits of medium-chain triglycerides. MCT from coconut oil are used in hospital formulas to feed the very young, the critically ill, and those who have digestive problems. It makes up a vital part of the solutions fed to patients intravenously or through a tube inserted down the throat. If you were ever given formula as a baby you took advantage of the health-promoting properties of coconut oil. MCT from coconut oil have been added to baby formula for decades.
MCT are easily digested, absorbed, and put to use nourishing the body. Unlike other fats, they put little strain on the digestive system and provide a quick source of energy necessary to promote healing. This is important for patients who are using every ounce of strength they have to overcome serious illness or injury. It's no wonder why MCT are added to infant formulas. Actually, whether you were breast or formula fed as an infant you consumed MCT. Why? Because MCT are not only found in coconut oil but are natural and vital components of human breast milk. MCT are considered essential nutrients for infants as well as for people with serious digestive problems like cystic fibrosis. Like other essential nutrients, you must get them directly from the diet.
One of the first scientifically recognized benefits of MCT is the unique manner in which they are digested and utilized by the body. These fats provide nutritional benefits that can improve overall health of both the sick and the well, the young and the old. Even athletes are now using them to boost performance and control weight. Unfortunately, few foods nowadays contain MCT; the best source is coconut oil. By adding coconut oil to your diet you can literally eat your way to better health.
Digestion and Nutrient Absorption
For at least five decades researchers have recognized that the MCT were digested differently than other fats. This difference has had important applications in the treatment of many digestive and metabolic health conditions and since that time MCT have been routinely used in hospital and baby formulas.
The digestive health advantages of MCT) over LCT are due to the differences in the way our bodies metabolize these fats. Because the MCT molecules are smaller, they require less energy and fewer enzymes to break them down for digestion. They are digested and absorbed quickly and with minimal effort.
MCT are broken down almost immediately by enzymes in the saliva and gastric juices so that pancreatic fat-digesting enzymes are not even essential.1 Therefore, there is less strain on the pancreas and digestive system. This has important implications for patients who suffer from digestive and metabolic problems. Premature and ill infants especially whose digestive organs are underdeveloped, are able to absorb MCT with relative ease, while other fats pass through their systems pretty much undigested. People who suffer from malabsorption problems such as cystic fibrosis, and have difficulty digesting or absorbing fats and fat soluble vitamins, benefit greatly from MCT. They can also be of importance to people suffering from diabetes, obesity, gallbladder disease, pancreatitis Crohn's disease, pancreatic insufficiency, and some forms of cancer.
As we get older our bodies don't function as well as they did in earlier years. The pancreas doesn't make as many digestive enzymes, our intestines don't absorb nutrients as well, the whole process of digestion and elimination moves at a lower rate of efficiency. As a result, older people often suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Because MCT are easy to digest and improve vitamin and mineral absorption they should be included in the meals of older people. This is easy to do if the meals are prepared with coconut oil.
In the digestive system MCT are broken down into individual fatty acids (MCFA). Unlike other fatty acids, MCFA are absorbed directly from the intestines into the portal vein and sent straight to the liver where they are, for the most part, burned as fuel much like a carbohydrate. In this respect they act more like carbohydrates than like fats.2
Other fats require pancreatic enzymes to break them into smaller units. They are then absorbed into the intestinal wall and packaged into bundles of fat (lipid) and protein called lipoproteins. These lipoproteins are carried by the lymphatic system, bypassing the liver, and then dumped into the bloodstream, where they are circulated throughout the body. As they circulate in the blood, their fatty components are distributed to all the tissues of the body. The lipoproteins get smaller and smaller, until there is little left of them. At this time they are picked up by the liver, broken apart, and used to produce energy or, if needed, repackaged into other lipoproteins and sent back into the bloodstream to be distributed throughout the body. Cholesterol, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat are all packaged together into lipoproteins and carried throughout the body in this way. In contrast, medium-chain fatty acids are not packaged into lipoproteins but go to the liver where they are converted into energy. Ordinarily they are not stored to any significant degree as body fat. Medium-chain fatty acids produce energy. Other dietary fats produce body fat.
Because of the above advantages, coconut oil has been a lifesaver for many people, particularly the very young and the very old. It is used medicinally in special food preparations for those who suffer digestive disorders and have trouble digesting fats. For the same reason, it is also used in infant formula for the treatment of malnutrition. Since it is rapidly absorbed, it can deliver quick nourishment without putting excessive strain on the digestive and enzyme systems and help conserve the body's energy that would normally be expended in digesting other fats. Medium-chain triglycerides comprise a major ingredient in most infant formulas commonly used today.
Metabolism and Energy
Eating foods containing MCT is like putting high octane fuel into your car. The car runs smoother and gets better gas mileage. Likewise, with MCT your body performs better because it has more energy and greater endurance. Because MCFA are funneled directly to the liver and converted into energy, the body gets a boost of energy. And because MCFA are easily absorbed by the energy-producing organelles of the cells, metabolism increases. This burst of energy has a stimulating effect on the entire body.
The fact that MCT digest immediately to produce energy and stimulate metabolism has led athletes to use them as a means to enhance exercise performance. Studies indicate this may be true. In one study, for example, investigators tested the physical endurance of mice who were given MCT in their daily diet against those that weren't. The study extended over a six-week period. The mice were subjected to a swimming endurance test every other day. They were placed in a pool of water with a constant current. The total swimming time until exhaustion was measured. While at first there was little difference between the groups of mice, those fed MCT quickly began to out-perform the others and continued to improve throughout the testing period.3 Tests such as this demonstrated that MCT had the ability to enhance endurance and exercise performance, at least in mice.
In another study using humans, conditioned cyclists were used. The cyclists pedaled for three hours. During the last hour they were each given a beverage to drink. Those who received beverages containing MCT out performed the others. Because of studies like these many of the sports drinks and energy bars sold at health food stores contain MCT to provide a quick source of energy.
It's easy to see why athletes would be interested in gaining greater endurance and energy, but what about non-athletes? MCT can do the same for them. If eaten regularly MCT can provide a boost in energy and performance of daily activities. Would you like to increase your energy level throughout the day? If you get tired in the middle of the day or feel you lack energy, adding coconut oil to your daily diet may provide you with a much needed boost to help carry you through.
Besides increasing your energy level, there are other very important benefits that results from boosting your metabolic rate: it helps protect you from illness and speeds healing. When metabolism is increased, cells function at a higher rate of efficiency. They heal injuries quicker, old and diseased cells are replaced faster, and young, new cells are generated at an increased rate to replace worn-out ones. Even the immune system functions better.
Several health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and osteoporosis are more prevalent in those people who have slow metabolism. Any health condition is made worse if the metabolic rate is slower than normal, because cells can't heal and repair themselves as quickly. Increasing metabolic rate, therefore, provides an increased degree of protection from both degenerative and infectious illnesses.
Nature's Perfect Food
Among all the foods in nature there is one that stands head and shoulders above all the rest. That food is mothers' milk. Milk was designed by nature to supply all the nutrients a baby needs for the first year or so of life. It contains a perfect blend of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats for optimal growth and development. Without question breast milk is one of the wonders of nature.
Children who are breastfed not only take in important nutrients from the milk, but they also receive antibodies and other substances necessary to protect them against childhood illnesses such as ear infections, later in life. Breastfed children are healthier than those who are not. They have better teeth and jaw formation, they are less prone to allergies, have better digestive function, and are better able to fight off infectious disease. Research suggests that breastfed children may even develop higher intelligence. Recognizing the superiority of nature, scientists have attempted to make baby formula match mother's milk as closely as possible.
An important component of breast milk is medium-chain fatty acids, principally lauric acid. Lauric acid is also the primary saturated fatty acid found in coconut oil. Apparently nature thought it essential to the baby's health to include it. Nature has a reason for everything it does. It doesn't do things, such as putting MCT in milk, just for the fun of it.
Some of the important reasons medium-chain fatty acids are included in milk are improved nutrient absorption and digestive function. As noted earlier, pancreatic enzymes aren't even necessary to digest them. They also help to regulate blood sugar levels. Another very important function is that medium-chain fatty acids protect the baby from harmful microorganisms. The baby's immature immune system is supported by the antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic properties of these vital fatty acids. In fact, without these unique saturated fats, the baby would probably not survive long. It would become malnourished and highly susceptible to a myriad of infectious diseases.
Milk Quality and MCT
Milk that is rich in medium-chain fatty acids is vital for the healthy growth and development of the child. For this reason, MCT are added to most, if not all, baby formulas. Yet, these fatty acids are not exactly the same as those found naturally in mother's milk.
Just as the fatty acid content and quality of formula can be altered, so can human breast milk. Breast milk is, without question, the best choice of food for babies. Not all breast milk is the same however. The quality of the milk is influenced by the mother's health and diet. Breast milk is made from the nutrients the mother consumes. If she doesn't eat the right amount of nutrients, her body will pull them out of her own tissues. If the mother is deficient in these vital nutrients herself, then the milk she produces will also be deficient. Similarly, if she eats foods containing toxins (such as trans fatty acids) her milk may contain them as well. Eating wisely is very important for pregnant and nursing women and their babies.
The mammary glands produce small amounts of all the medium-chain fatty acids, vital components in human breast milk. They are there because they are easy for an infant's immature digestive system to absorb and utilize. They help give the baby the nutrients and energy it needs to grow and develop properly. Because they also have antimicrobial properties they give the infant some degree of protection against viruses such as HIV and herpes, bacteria such a chlamydia and H. pyloris, fungi such as Candida and protozoa such as giardia.
Both animal and human studies have shown MCT to be an important component in mother's milk for the proper growth and development of their offspring. For example, when pregnant and lactating pigs were fed diets containing either long-chain fatty acids (vegetable oil) or medium-chain fatty acids (coconut oil) there was a pronounced difference in the survival and growth rates. The piglets whose mothers received the MCT grew faster and healthier and had a survival rate of 68% compared to 32%. This was particularly true with piglets which were born underweight.5
The same thing appears to happen in humans. For example, coconut oil was added to the formula of 46 very low-birthweight babies to see if supplementation was capable of enhancing their weight gain. The group with the coconut oil gained weight quicker. The weight gain was due to physical growth and not fat storage.6 The babies gained more weight and grew better with the coconut oil because their bodies were able to digest it easily. The vegetable oils, to a great extent, passed through their digestive tracts undigested and thus deprived them of the fat calories they needed for proper development. MCT not only allow infants to absorb needed fats but they improve the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, and protein.7,8
Human milk fat has a unique fatty acid composition. The primary fat is saturated, comprising about 45-50 percent of the total fat content. The next most abundant fat is monounsaturated which makes up about 35 percent of the milk fat. Polyunsaturated fat comprises only 15-20 percent of the total. A significant portion of the saturated fat in human breast milk can be in the form of MCT. Sadly, many mothers produce very little. This can have dramatic consequences on the health of their children.
If breast milk does not contain enough MCT, an infant can suffer from nutritional deficiency and become vulnerable to infectious illness. Therefore, it is important that mother's milk contain as much MCT as nature will allow. This can be done with diet. Given an ample supply of food containing medium-chain fatty acids, a nursing mother will produce a milk rich in these health-promoting nutrients.9 While cow's milk and other dairy products contain small amounts, the foods richest in medium-chain fatty acids are the tropical oils, principally coconut oil.
The levels of these antimicrobial fatty acids can be as low as 3 to 4 percent, but when nursing mothers eat coconut products (shredded coconut, coconut milk, coconut oil, etc.) the levels of MCT in their milk increase significantly. For instance, eating 40 grams (about 3 tablespoons worth) of coconut oil in one meal can temporarily increase the lauric acid in the milk of a nursing mother from 3.9% to 9.6% after 14 hours.10 The content of caprylic and capric acids are also increased. "This gives an important benefit," says Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. an expert in lipid chemistry and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. "The milk has increased amounts of the protective antimicrobials lauric acid and capric acid, which gives even greater protection to the infant." If the mother consumes coconut oil every day while nursing, the medium-chain fatty acid content will be even greater.
Preparation by the mother should start before the baby is born. Pregnant women store fat to be used later in making their milk. After the baby is born the fatty acids stored in the mother's body and supplied by her daily diet are used in the production of her milk. If she has eaten and continues to eat foods which supply ample amounts of MCFA, particularly lauric acid and capric acid (the two most important antimicrobial medium-chain fatty acids), her milk will provide maximum benefit to her baby. These mothers can have as much as 18 percent of the saturated fatty acids in their milk in the form of lauric and capric acids.
If the mother did not eat foods containing MCT and does not eat them while nursing, her mammary glands will only be capable of producing about 3 percent lauric acid and 1 percent capric acid. Her child will lose a great deal of the nutritional benefits as well as the antimicrobial protection the infant could have otherwise had.
Protection from Illness
One of the major characteristics of human breast milk is its ability to protect infants from a myriad of infectious illnesses during a time when their immune systems are immature and incapable of adequately defending themselves. The protective antimicrobial substances in milk that protect the child from a world teaming with infectious germs and parasites are the MCFA. There are some illnesses that even an adult with a healthy immune system may have difficulty fighting off. If the baby is not protected with an adequate amount of MCT in his or her milk, exposure to such an infection could result in serious illness.
When a nursing mother is infected with such an illness, her child is also vulnerable. Mothers infected by certain viruses can pass the infection on to their infants through breastfeeding. In these cases breastfeeding is not recommended. This is particularly true when the mother is infected with a dangerous virus such as HIV. Recent research has shown that mothers who include a source of lauric acid, such as coconut oil, in their diets have lower risk of infecting their nursing infants. The presence of the MCT in the milk lowers the level of the virus in the milk and thus helps lower the risk of transmission of the disease.
While HIV-infected mothers are usually advised not to breastfeed their young for fear that the virus may be transferred, there is no feasible option in some parts of the world. Many women in resource-poor areas do not have the financial means to buy infant formula. Breastfeeding is really their only option. Adding coconut products and coconut oil to the mother's diet is the only practical defense these women have against passing the AIDS virus to their children.
It has been recommended that HIV-infected mothers who are breastfeeding consume 24-28 grams/day of lauric acid and 3-4 grams/day of capric acid to prevent the transfer of the virus. Since coconut oil is nearly 48 percent lauric acid and 7 percent capric acid, this requirement would be met if the mother ate about 50-55 grams of coconut oil each day. A tablespoon is equivalent to 14 grams. So 31/2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day would provide the recommended amount of both lauric and capric acids.
Other viral infections such as those that cause measles, herpes, mononucleosis, and such are also a threat to nursing infants. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can help protect their children by eating an abundant amount of coconut oil or products that contain coconut oil, such as shredded coconut or coconut milk.
Any mother or expectant mother who desires a healthy, well-developed baby should consider adding coconut oil to her diet. She will not only assure better health for her children but will benefit greatly herself.
MCFA are vital nutrients and protectors found naturally in human milk. They are deadly enough to kill the AIDS virus yet gentle enough to nourish a premature infant to health. As we grow to adulthood and beyond, our bodies begin to wear down. MCFA can help nourish and protect us, as it does infants, from infectious and degenerative disease. It appears that coconut oil provides many health benefits to those who are very young and those who are very old and all those in between!
http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/article10612.htm
The vast majority of the fats and oils you eat, whether they are saturated or unsaturated or come from an animal or a plant, are composed of long-chain triglycerides. Probably 98 to 100% of all the fats we eat consist of LCT. Coconut oil is unique because it is composed predominately of MCT. The size of the fatty acid is extremely important because physiological effects of medium-chain fatty acids in coconut oil are distinctly different from the long-chain fatty acids more commonly found in our diet. It's the MCT in coconut oil that make it different from all other fats and for the most part gives it its unique character and healing properties. Almost all of the medium-chain triglycerides used in research, medicine, and food products come from coconut oil.
Have you or someone you know ever been in a serious car accident? I mean serious enough that you had to be rushed to the hospital and spend time in the intensive care unit. Or maybe you've come down with a life-threatening illness. Or perhaps due to age you've been hospitalized to treat some degenerative condition. In any of these situations, whether you lived or died depended on the care you received in the hospital. Often this required you to be fed intravenously or through a tube. In the intensive care unit there would be others, some suffering from complications from genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis or epilepsy and perhaps even premature infants struggling to survive their first few weeks of life. In each of these cases you and these other patients can give some of the credit for your recovery to coconut oil. Yes, in one form or another, coconut oil was part of your treatment.
Regardless of the condition, recovery requires good nutrition. Food scientists have long noted the nutritional benefits of medium-chain triglycerides. MCT from coconut oil are used in hospital formulas to feed the very young, the critically ill, and those who have digestive problems. It makes up a vital part of the solutions fed to patients intravenously or through a tube inserted down the throat. If you were ever given formula as a baby you took advantage of the health-promoting properties of coconut oil. MCT from coconut oil have been added to baby formula for decades.
MCT are easily digested, absorbed, and put to use nourishing the body. Unlike other fats, they put little strain on the digestive system and provide a quick source of energy necessary to promote healing. This is important for patients who are using every ounce of strength they have to overcome serious illness or injury. It's no wonder why MCT are added to infant formulas. Actually, whether you were breast or formula fed as an infant you consumed MCT. Why? Because MCT are not only found in coconut oil but are natural and vital components of human breast milk. MCT are considered essential nutrients for infants as well as for people with serious digestive problems like cystic fibrosis. Like other essential nutrients, you must get them directly from the diet.
One of the first scientifically recognized benefits of MCT is the unique manner in which they are digested and utilized by the body. These fats provide nutritional benefits that can improve overall health of both the sick and the well, the young and the old. Even athletes are now using them to boost performance and control weight. Unfortunately, few foods nowadays contain MCT; the best source is coconut oil. By adding coconut oil to your diet you can literally eat your way to better health.
Digestion and Nutrient Absorption
For at least five decades researchers have recognized that the MCT were digested differently than other fats. This difference has had important applications in the treatment of many digestive and metabolic health conditions and since that time MCT have been routinely used in hospital and baby formulas.
The digestive health advantages of MCT) over LCT are due to the differences in the way our bodies metabolize these fats. Because the MCT molecules are smaller, they require less energy and fewer enzymes to break them down for digestion. They are digested and absorbed quickly and with minimal effort.
MCT are broken down almost immediately by enzymes in the saliva and gastric juices so that pancreatic fat-digesting enzymes are not even essential.1 Therefore, there is less strain on the pancreas and digestive system. This has important implications for patients who suffer from digestive and metabolic problems. Premature and ill infants especially whose digestive organs are underdeveloped, are able to absorb MCT with relative ease, while other fats pass through their systems pretty much undigested. People who suffer from malabsorption problems such as cystic fibrosis, and have difficulty digesting or absorbing fats and fat soluble vitamins, benefit greatly from MCT. They can also be of importance to people suffering from diabetes, obesity, gallbladder disease, pancreatitis Crohn's disease, pancreatic insufficiency, and some forms of cancer.
As we get older our bodies don't function as well as they did in earlier years. The pancreas doesn't make as many digestive enzymes, our intestines don't absorb nutrients as well, the whole process of digestion and elimination moves at a lower rate of efficiency. As a result, older people often suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Because MCT are easy to digest and improve vitamin and mineral absorption they should be included in the meals of older people. This is easy to do if the meals are prepared with coconut oil.
In the digestive system MCT are broken down into individual fatty acids (MCFA). Unlike other fatty acids, MCFA are absorbed directly from the intestines into the portal vein and sent straight to the liver where they are, for the most part, burned as fuel much like a carbohydrate. In this respect they act more like carbohydrates than like fats.2
Other fats require pancreatic enzymes to break them into smaller units. They are then absorbed into the intestinal wall and packaged into bundles of fat (lipid) and protein called lipoproteins. These lipoproteins are carried by the lymphatic system, bypassing the liver, and then dumped into the bloodstream, where they are circulated throughout the body. As they circulate in the blood, their fatty components are distributed to all the tissues of the body. The lipoproteins get smaller and smaller, until there is little left of them. At this time they are picked up by the liver, broken apart, and used to produce energy or, if needed, repackaged into other lipoproteins and sent back into the bloodstream to be distributed throughout the body. Cholesterol, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat are all packaged together into lipoproteins and carried throughout the body in this way. In contrast, medium-chain fatty acids are not packaged into lipoproteins but go to the liver where they are converted into energy. Ordinarily they are not stored to any significant degree as body fat. Medium-chain fatty acids produce energy. Other dietary fats produce body fat.
Because of the above advantages, coconut oil has been a lifesaver for many people, particularly the very young and the very old. It is used medicinally in special food preparations for those who suffer digestive disorders and have trouble digesting fats. For the same reason, it is also used in infant formula for the treatment of malnutrition. Since it is rapidly absorbed, it can deliver quick nourishment without putting excessive strain on the digestive and enzyme systems and help conserve the body's energy that would normally be expended in digesting other fats. Medium-chain triglycerides comprise a major ingredient in most infant formulas commonly used today.
Metabolism and Energy
Eating foods containing MCT is like putting high octane fuel into your car. The car runs smoother and gets better gas mileage. Likewise, with MCT your body performs better because it has more energy and greater endurance. Because MCFA are funneled directly to the liver and converted into energy, the body gets a boost of energy. And because MCFA are easily absorbed by the energy-producing organelles of the cells, metabolism increases. This burst of energy has a stimulating effect on the entire body.
The fact that MCT digest immediately to produce energy and stimulate metabolism has led athletes to use them as a means to enhance exercise performance. Studies indicate this may be true. In one study, for example, investigators tested the physical endurance of mice who were given MCT in their daily diet against those that weren't. The study extended over a six-week period. The mice were subjected to a swimming endurance test every other day. They were placed in a pool of water with a constant current. The total swimming time until exhaustion was measured. While at first there was little difference between the groups of mice, those fed MCT quickly began to out-perform the others and continued to improve throughout the testing period.3 Tests such as this demonstrated that MCT had the ability to enhance endurance and exercise performance, at least in mice.
In another study using humans, conditioned cyclists were used. The cyclists pedaled for three hours. During the last hour they were each given a beverage to drink. Those who received beverages containing MCT out performed the others. Because of studies like these many of the sports drinks and energy bars sold at health food stores contain MCT to provide a quick source of energy.
It's easy to see why athletes would be interested in gaining greater endurance and energy, but what about non-athletes? MCT can do the same for them. If eaten regularly MCT can provide a boost in energy and performance of daily activities. Would you like to increase your energy level throughout the day? If you get tired in the middle of the day or feel you lack energy, adding coconut oil to your daily diet may provide you with a much needed boost to help carry you through.
Besides increasing your energy level, there are other very important benefits that results from boosting your metabolic rate: it helps protect you from illness and speeds healing. When metabolism is increased, cells function at a higher rate of efficiency. They heal injuries quicker, old and diseased cells are replaced faster, and young, new cells are generated at an increased rate to replace worn-out ones. Even the immune system functions better.
Several health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and osteoporosis are more prevalent in those people who have slow metabolism. Any health condition is made worse if the metabolic rate is slower than normal, because cells can't heal and repair themselves as quickly. Increasing metabolic rate, therefore, provides an increased degree of protection from both degenerative and infectious illnesses.
Nature's Perfect Food
Among all the foods in nature there is one that stands head and shoulders above all the rest. That food is mothers' milk. Milk was designed by nature to supply all the nutrients a baby needs for the first year or so of life. It contains a perfect blend of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats for optimal growth and development. Without question breast milk is one of the wonders of nature.
Children who are breastfed not only take in important nutrients from the milk, but they also receive antibodies and other substances necessary to protect them against childhood illnesses such as ear infections, later in life. Breastfed children are healthier than those who are not. They have better teeth and jaw formation, they are less prone to allergies, have better digestive function, and are better able to fight off infectious disease. Research suggests that breastfed children may even develop higher intelligence. Recognizing the superiority of nature, scientists have attempted to make baby formula match mother's milk as closely as possible.
An important component of breast milk is medium-chain fatty acids, principally lauric acid. Lauric acid is also the primary saturated fatty acid found in coconut oil. Apparently nature thought it essential to the baby's health to include it. Nature has a reason for everything it does. It doesn't do things, such as putting MCT in milk, just for the fun of it.
Some of the important reasons medium-chain fatty acids are included in milk are improved nutrient absorption and digestive function. As noted earlier, pancreatic enzymes aren't even necessary to digest them. They also help to regulate blood sugar levels. Another very important function is that medium-chain fatty acids protect the baby from harmful microorganisms. The baby's immature immune system is supported by the antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic properties of these vital fatty acids. In fact, without these unique saturated fats, the baby would probably not survive long. It would become malnourished and highly susceptible to a myriad of infectious diseases.
Milk Quality and MCT
Milk that is rich in medium-chain fatty acids is vital for the healthy growth and development of the child. For this reason, MCT are added to most, if not all, baby formulas. Yet, these fatty acids are not exactly the same as those found naturally in mother's milk.
Just as the fatty acid content and quality of formula can be altered, so can human breast milk. Breast milk is, without question, the best choice of food for babies. Not all breast milk is the same however. The quality of the milk is influenced by the mother's health and diet. Breast milk is made from the nutrients the mother consumes. If she doesn't eat the right amount of nutrients, her body will pull them out of her own tissues. If the mother is deficient in these vital nutrients herself, then the milk she produces will also be deficient. Similarly, if she eats foods containing toxins (such as trans fatty acids) her milk may contain them as well. Eating wisely is very important for pregnant and nursing women and their babies.
The mammary glands produce small amounts of all the medium-chain fatty acids, vital components in human breast milk. They are there because they are easy for an infant's immature digestive system to absorb and utilize. They help give the baby the nutrients and energy it needs to grow and develop properly. Because they also have antimicrobial properties they give the infant some degree of protection against viruses such as HIV and herpes, bacteria such a chlamydia and H. pyloris, fungi such as Candida and protozoa such as giardia.
Both animal and human studies have shown MCT to be an important component in mother's milk for the proper growth and development of their offspring. For example, when pregnant and lactating pigs were fed diets containing either long-chain fatty acids (vegetable oil) or medium-chain fatty acids (coconut oil) there was a pronounced difference in the survival and growth rates. The piglets whose mothers received the MCT grew faster and healthier and had a survival rate of 68% compared to 32%. This was particularly true with piglets which were born underweight.5
The same thing appears to happen in humans. For example, coconut oil was added to the formula of 46 very low-birthweight babies to see if supplementation was capable of enhancing their weight gain. The group with the coconut oil gained weight quicker. The weight gain was due to physical growth and not fat storage.6 The babies gained more weight and grew better with the coconut oil because their bodies were able to digest it easily. The vegetable oils, to a great extent, passed through their digestive tracts undigested and thus deprived them of the fat calories they needed for proper development. MCT not only allow infants to absorb needed fats but they improve the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, and protein.7,8
Human milk fat has a unique fatty acid composition. The primary fat is saturated, comprising about 45-50 percent of the total fat content. The next most abundant fat is monounsaturated which makes up about 35 percent of the milk fat. Polyunsaturated fat comprises only 15-20 percent of the total. A significant portion of the saturated fat in human breast milk can be in the form of MCT. Sadly, many mothers produce very little. This can have dramatic consequences on the health of their children.
If breast milk does not contain enough MCT, an infant can suffer from nutritional deficiency and become vulnerable to infectious illness. Therefore, it is important that mother's milk contain as much MCT as nature will allow. This can be done with diet. Given an ample supply of food containing medium-chain fatty acids, a nursing mother will produce a milk rich in these health-promoting nutrients.9 While cow's milk and other dairy products contain small amounts, the foods richest in medium-chain fatty acids are the tropical oils, principally coconut oil.
The levels of these antimicrobial fatty acids can be as low as 3 to 4 percent, but when nursing mothers eat coconut products (shredded coconut, coconut milk, coconut oil, etc.) the levels of MCT in their milk increase significantly. For instance, eating 40 grams (about 3 tablespoons worth) of coconut oil in one meal can temporarily increase the lauric acid in the milk of a nursing mother from 3.9% to 9.6% after 14 hours.10 The content of caprylic and capric acids are also increased. "This gives an important benefit," says Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. an expert in lipid chemistry and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. "The milk has increased amounts of the protective antimicrobials lauric acid and capric acid, which gives even greater protection to the infant." If the mother consumes coconut oil every day while nursing, the medium-chain fatty acid content will be even greater.
Preparation by the mother should start before the baby is born. Pregnant women store fat to be used later in making their milk. After the baby is born the fatty acids stored in the mother's body and supplied by her daily diet are used in the production of her milk. If she has eaten and continues to eat foods which supply ample amounts of MCFA, particularly lauric acid and capric acid (the two most important antimicrobial medium-chain fatty acids), her milk will provide maximum benefit to her baby. These mothers can have as much as 18 percent of the saturated fatty acids in their milk in the form of lauric and capric acids.
If the mother did not eat foods containing MCT and does not eat them while nursing, her mammary glands will only be capable of producing about 3 percent lauric acid and 1 percent capric acid. Her child will lose a great deal of the nutritional benefits as well as the antimicrobial protection the infant could have otherwise had.
Protection from Illness
One of the major characteristics of human breast milk is its ability to protect infants from a myriad of infectious illnesses during a time when their immune systems are immature and incapable of adequately defending themselves. The protective antimicrobial substances in milk that protect the child from a world teaming with infectious germs and parasites are the MCFA. There are some illnesses that even an adult with a healthy immune system may have difficulty fighting off. If the baby is not protected with an adequate amount of MCT in his or her milk, exposure to such an infection could result in serious illness.
When a nursing mother is infected with such an illness, her child is also vulnerable. Mothers infected by certain viruses can pass the infection on to their infants through breastfeeding. In these cases breastfeeding is not recommended. This is particularly true when the mother is infected with a dangerous virus such as HIV. Recent research has shown that mothers who include a source of lauric acid, such as coconut oil, in their diets have lower risk of infecting their nursing infants. The presence of the MCT in the milk lowers the level of the virus in the milk and thus helps lower the risk of transmission of the disease.
While HIV-infected mothers are usually advised not to breastfeed their young for fear that the virus may be transferred, there is no feasible option in some parts of the world. Many women in resource-poor areas do not have the financial means to buy infant formula. Breastfeeding is really their only option. Adding coconut products and coconut oil to the mother's diet is the only practical defense these women have against passing the AIDS virus to their children.
It has been recommended that HIV-infected mothers who are breastfeeding consume 24-28 grams/day of lauric acid and 3-4 grams/day of capric acid to prevent the transfer of the virus. Since coconut oil is nearly 48 percent lauric acid and 7 percent capric acid, this requirement would be met if the mother ate about 50-55 grams of coconut oil each day. A tablespoon is equivalent to 14 grams. So 31/2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day would provide the recommended amount of both lauric and capric acids.
Other viral infections such as those that cause measles, herpes, mononucleosis, and such are also a threat to nursing infants. Pregnant women and nursing mothers can help protect their children by eating an abundant amount of coconut oil or products that contain coconut oil, such as shredded coconut or coconut milk.
Any mother or expectant mother who desires a healthy, well-developed baby should consider adding coconut oil to her diet. She will not only assure better health for her children but will benefit greatly herself.
MCFA are vital nutrients and protectors found naturally in human milk. They are deadly enough to kill the AIDS virus yet gentle enough to nourish a premature infant to health. As we grow to adulthood and beyond, our bodies begin to wear down. MCFA can help nourish and protect us, as it does infants, from infectious and degenerative disease. It appears that coconut oil provides many health benefits to those who are very young and those who are very old and all those in between!
http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/article10612.htm
Government Food Nazis
(NaturalNews) Rawsome Foods, part of The Right to Choose Healthy Foods buyers` club association in Venice, California, was raided by several agencies. Federal officers, representatives of the State of California, Los Angeles County Health officials and Los Angeles police officers arrived with guns drawn. Although the volunteer workers at the food club had committed no crime, the government agents forced them to remain on the property for the entire 5 hours while they seized 17 huge coolers of high quality food; their warrant, however, explicitly stated that they could only take sample vials of food. The agents threatened and coerced club members who wanted to film the trespass and confiscation of property. The authorities stole thousands of dollars of the club members` raw milk and honey.
The club was found to be in violation of a misdemeanor (minor accounts of law), Illegal Food Facility (CAL Code 114381) and the county law of business without a public health license (Title 8 LA County Code 8.04.932), but the warrant was issued on claims of felony violations. Even though Rawesome is operating illegally, these alleged infractions of the law come with extremely minor penalties. In other words, the violations would be something on the level of forgetting to pay your car registration. So why didn`t the government simply write a letter or pay a non-threatening visit asking the food club to produce a license?
The Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF) is a not-for-profit trust association formed to protect individuals` rights to obtain and consume healthy food. The club members are well-educated and intelligent, who daily choose to reject standard toxic governmental food restrictions, preparations and packaging for natural God-given healthy food. RTCHF contracts with farmers to lease their animals and/or fields and owns the produce of those animals and fields. Therefore, all members of all clubs own the produce, not the farmer. The farmer does not sell people anything but gets paid for his services to cultivate, grow, harvest, and board and care for animals, as well as collect, package and ship the produce owned by club members.
In the USA and Canada, we have the right to ownership. As it states in statutes of law, government agencies, including the USDA, have jurisdiction over commerce. Commerce is the open exchange of goods to the public. Since RTCHF and its clubs are private closed-to-the-public associations, the government has no jurisdiction. This government raid is equivalent to a government agent entering your private home and telling you what foods you can have in your home.
In order to obtain the warrant for the food club raid, government agents had to lie about the mentioned laws and claim that operating a business without a license is a felony, even when it is a misdemeanor.
As more and more people realize the health benefits of raw milk, they are turning away from factory farmed milk. We don`t want animals that are treated in inhumane ways, kept alive on antibiotics, and forced to eat genetically modified soy and corn to be providing our milk, cheese, and butter. Yet here the government is acting to protect big dairy interests and stamp out the growing small farm suppliers.
Private buying clubs like RTCHF acquire food directly from farmers, insuring that small farms can make a living producing humanely cared for dairy foods, and insuring consumers get the healthy food we deserve. In these actions, the Federal, State and even local authorities have violated our sovereignty, our boundaries, and our personal freedom.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029547_raw_food_buyers_club.html#ixzz1DKuIpXXq
The club was found to be in violation of a misdemeanor (minor accounts of law), Illegal Food Facility (CAL Code 114381) and the county law of business without a public health license (Title 8 LA County Code 8.04.932), but the warrant was issued on claims of felony violations. Even though Rawesome is operating illegally, these alleged infractions of the law come with extremely minor penalties. In other words, the violations would be something on the level of forgetting to pay your car registration. So why didn`t the government simply write a letter or pay a non-threatening visit asking the food club to produce a license?
The Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF) is a not-for-profit trust association formed to protect individuals` rights to obtain and consume healthy food. The club members are well-educated and intelligent, who daily choose to reject standard toxic governmental food restrictions, preparations and packaging for natural God-given healthy food. RTCHF contracts with farmers to lease their animals and/or fields and owns the produce of those animals and fields. Therefore, all members of all clubs own the produce, not the farmer. The farmer does not sell people anything but gets paid for his services to cultivate, grow, harvest, and board and care for animals, as well as collect, package and ship the produce owned by club members.
In the USA and Canada, we have the right to ownership. As it states in statutes of law, government agencies, including the USDA, have jurisdiction over commerce. Commerce is the open exchange of goods to the public. Since RTCHF and its clubs are private closed-to-the-public associations, the government has no jurisdiction. This government raid is equivalent to a government agent entering your private home and telling you what foods you can have in your home.
In order to obtain the warrant for the food club raid, government agents had to lie about the mentioned laws and claim that operating a business without a license is a felony, even when it is a misdemeanor.
As more and more people realize the health benefits of raw milk, they are turning away from factory farmed milk. We don`t want animals that are treated in inhumane ways, kept alive on antibiotics, and forced to eat genetically modified soy and corn to be providing our milk, cheese, and butter. Yet here the government is acting to protect big dairy interests and stamp out the growing small farm suppliers.
Private buying clubs like RTCHF acquire food directly from farmers, insuring that small farms can make a living producing humanely cared for dairy foods, and insuring consumers get the healthy food we deserve. In these actions, the Federal, State and even local authorities have violated our sovereignty, our boundaries, and our personal freedom.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029547_raw_food_buyers_club.html#ixzz1DKuIpXXq
Government Food Nazis
(NaturalNews) Rawsome Foods, part of The Right to Choose Healthy Foods buyers` club association in Venice, California, was raided by several agencies. Federal officers, representatives of the State of California, Los Angeles County Health officials and Los Angeles police officers arrived with guns drawn. Although the volunteer workers at the food club had committed no crime, the government agents forced them to remain on the property for the entire 5 hours while they seized 17 huge coolers of high quality food; their warrant, however, explicitly stated that they could only take sample vials of food. The agents threatened and coerced club members who wanted to film the trespass and confiscation of property. The authorities stole thousands of dollars of the club members` raw milk and honey.
The club was found to be in violation of a misdemeanor (minor accounts of law), Illegal Food Facility (CAL Code 114381) and the county law of business without a public health license (Title 8 LA County Code 8.04.932), but the warrant was issued on claims of felony violations. Even though Rawesome is operating illegally, these alleged infractions of the law come with extremely minor penalties. In other words, the violations would be something on the level of forgetting to pay your car registration. So why didn`t the government simply write a letter or pay a non-threatening visit asking the food club to produce a license?
The Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF) is a not-for-profit trust association formed to protect individuals` rights to obtain and consume healthy food. The club members are well-educated and intelligent, who daily choose to reject standard toxic governmental food restrictions, preparations and packaging for natural God-given healthy food. RTCHF contracts with farmers to lease their animals and/or fields and owns the produce of those animals and fields. Therefore, all members of all clubs own the produce, not the farmer. The farmer does not sell people anything but gets paid for his services to cultivate, grow, harvest, and board and care for animals, as well as collect, package and ship the produce owned by club members.
In the USA and Canada, we have the right to ownership. As it states in statutes of law, government agencies, including the USDA, have jurisdiction over commerce. Commerce is the open exchange of goods to the public. Since RTCHF and its clubs are private closed-to-the-public associations, the government has no jurisdiction. This government raid is equivalent to a government agent entering your private home and telling you what foods you can have in your home.
In order to obtain the warrant for the food club raid, government agents had to lie about the mentioned laws and claim that operating a business without a license is a felony, even when it is a misdemeanor.
As more and more people realize the health benefits of raw milk, they are turning away from factory farmed milk. We don`t want animals that are treated in inhumane ways, kept alive on antibiotics, and forced to eat genetically modified soy and corn to be providing our milk, cheese, and butter. Yet here the government is acting to protect big dairy interests and stamp out the growing small farm suppliers.
Private buying clubs like RTCHF acquire food directly from farmers, insuring that small farms can make a living producing humanely cared for dairy foods, and insuring consumers get the healthy food we deserve. In these actions, the Federal, State and even local authorities have violated our sovereignty, our boundaries, and our personal freedom.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029547_raw_food_buyers_club.html#ixzz1DKuIpXXq
The club was found to be in violation of a misdemeanor (minor accounts of law), Illegal Food Facility (CAL Code 114381) and the county law of business without a public health license (Title 8 LA County Code 8.04.932), but the warrant was issued on claims of felony violations. Even though Rawesome is operating illegally, these alleged infractions of the law come with extremely minor penalties. In other words, the violations would be something on the level of forgetting to pay your car registration. So why didn`t the government simply write a letter or pay a non-threatening visit asking the food club to produce a license?
The Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF) is a not-for-profit trust association formed to protect individuals` rights to obtain and consume healthy food. The club members are well-educated and intelligent, who daily choose to reject standard toxic governmental food restrictions, preparations and packaging for natural God-given healthy food. RTCHF contracts with farmers to lease their animals and/or fields and owns the produce of those animals and fields. Therefore, all members of all clubs own the produce, not the farmer. The farmer does not sell people anything but gets paid for his services to cultivate, grow, harvest, and board and care for animals, as well as collect, package and ship the produce owned by club members.
In the USA and Canada, we have the right to ownership. As it states in statutes of law, government agencies, including the USDA, have jurisdiction over commerce. Commerce is the open exchange of goods to the public. Since RTCHF and its clubs are private closed-to-the-public associations, the government has no jurisdiction. This government raid is equivalent to a government agent entering your private home and telling you what foods you can have in your home.
In order to obtain the warrant for the food club raid, government agents had to lie about the mentioned laws and claim that operating a business without a license is a felony, even when it is a misdemeanor.
As more and more people realize the health benefits of raw milk, they are turning away from factory farmed milk. We don`t want animals that are treated in inhumane ways, kept alive on antibiotics, and forced to eat genetically modified soy and corn to be providing our milk, cheese, and butter. Yet here the government is acting to protect big dairy interests and stamp out the growing small farm suppliers.
Private buying clubs like RTCHF acquire food directly from farmers, insuring that small farms can make a living producing humanely cared for dairy foods, and insuring consumers get the healthy food we deserve. In these actions, the Federal, State and even local authorities have violated our sovereignty, our boundaries, and our personal freedom.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029547_raw_food_buyers_club.html#ixzz1DKuIpXXq
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Dr. Julius Hensel
Dr. Julius Hensel was the greatest figure in the history of agricultural chemistry even if his powerful enemies, members of the octopus chemical fertilizer trust, have succeeded in suppressing his memory, destroying his books and getting his Stone Meal fertilizer off the market. But eventually the truth comes to the fore, and its enemies are vanquished. Julius Hensel's pioneer work in opposing the use of chemicals in agriculture, a half a century later, found rebirth in the Organic Movement which has swept through the world. But Hensel is more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer, for he claimed, on the basis of theoretical chemical considerations, and supported by practical tests, that his Stone Meal can replace not only chemical fertilizers but all animal ones as well.
It was the German agricultural chemist Liebig who first put forward the phosphorus-potash-nitrogen theory of chemical fertilization. This false doctrine Hensel bitterly attacked and in so doing, won the ire of the financial interests behind the sale of chemical fertilizers, which used agricultural authorities and university professors to denounce poor Hensel as a charlatan and his Stone Meal as worthless.
Though his fight against chemical fertilizers was a losing battle and he died as a defeated hero, it took a generation for Hensel's efforts to bear fruit in the modern Organic Movement, which has not given its founder the credit due him.
The fight between Liebig, advocate [of] one-sided chemical fertilization, and Hensel, who advocated a more balanced form of plant nutrition, including the trace minerals which Liebig completely overlooked, was a battle between an opportunist, who sought to further the sales of chemical fertilizers, and a true scientist, interested in humanity's welfare.
Though Liebig, with the Chemical Trust behind him, won the battle, Hensel's ideas finally triumphed... several decades after his passing.
Liebig claimed that plants require three main elements—nitrogen, phosphorus and potash—the basis of which conception chemical fertilizers were manufactured that supplied these elements. On the other hand, Hensel claimed that plants need many more than these three major elements, stressing the importance of the trace minerals, which at that time were ignored. In place of chemical fertilizers, supplying only three elements in an unnatural, caustic form, Hensel recommended the bland minerals of pulverized rocks, especially granite, a primordial rock which contains the many trace minerals that meet all needs of plant nutrition.
Hensel first made his discovery of powdered rock fertilization when he was a miller.
One day, while milling grain, he noticed that some stones were mixed with it and [he] ground [them] into a meal. He sprinkled this stone meal over the soil of his garden and was surprised to note how the vegetables took on a new, more vigorous growth. This led him to repeat the experiment by grinding more stones and applying the stone meal to fruit trees. Much to his surprise, apple trees that formerly bore wormy, imperfect fruit now produced fine quality fruit free from worms. Also vegetables fertilized by stone meal were free from insect pests and diseases. It seemed to be a complete plant food, which produced fine vegetables even in the poorest soil.
Encouraged by these results, Hensel put his "Stone Meal" on the market, and wrote extensively on its superiority over chemical fertilizers, while at the same time opposing the use of animal manure, and the nitrogen theory on which it is based, claiming that when plants are supplied with Stone Meal, plenty of water, air and sunshine, they will grow health-fully even if the soil is poor in nitrogen, since it was his belief that plants derive their nitrogen through their leaves, and do not depend on the soil for this element.
In opposing this use of chemical fertilizer, Hensel awoke the ire of a powerful enemy, which was resolved to liquidate him—the Chemical Trust. Through unfair competition, Hensel's "Stone Meal" business was destroyed and his product was taken off the market. However, the chief object of attack was his book, Bread From Stones, in which he expounded his new doctrines of Liebig on which the chemical fertilizer business was based, as well as the "Liebig meat extract." (For Hensel advocated vegetarianism, just as he advocated natural farming without chemicals or manure.)
Accordingly, his enemies succeeded in suppressing the further publication of this book and in removing it from libraries, until it became extremely rare and difficult to obtain. It is more fortunate that a surviving copy came into the writer's possession.
Dr. Julius Hensel was not only a student of agricultural chemistry, but also biochemistry and nutrition, and he related all these sciences, and united them into a composite science of life, which he labeled "Makro-biology." His theory was that the chemistry of life is basically determined by the chemistry of the soil, and that chemicals unbalance and pervert soil chemistry while powdered rocks help restore normal soil mineral balance, producing foods favorable to health and life.
His discoveries concerning the value of powdered rocks as soil conditioners and plant foods, though rejected and ridiculed when he first proposed them, were adopted by agricultural science nearly a century later, when the application of powdered limestone, rock phosphate and other rocks became standard agricultural practice. Granite, which Hensel recommended as the most balanced of all rocks as source of soil minerals, was first rejected as worthless, but later appreciated and used as a soil mineralizer.
During the course of his researches, Dr. Hensel found that in the primeval rocks, as granite, lie a potentially inexhaustible supply of all minerals required for the feeding and regeneration of the soil, plants, animals and man. All that is required is to reduce them to finely a pulverized form, so that their mineral elements may be made available to plants. Hensel wrote a book describing his discovery of a new method of creating more perfect fruits and vegetables, rich in all nutritional elements and immune to disease and insect pests, with the result that it produced worm-free fruit without the need of spraying. The foods so produced by rock-meal fertilization were true Organic Super Foods, far superior in flavor and value than those produced under the forcing action of manure or chemical fertilizers.
Hensel was the first to put up a fight against the then-growing new chemical fertilizer industry—a struggle that was continued in the next century by Sir William Howard in England and J. I. Rodale in America.
The use of chemical fertilizers, claimed Hensel, leads to the following evil consequences:
It poisons the soil, destroying beneficial soil bacteria, earthworms and humus. *
It creates unhealthy, unbalanced, mineral-deficient plants, lacking resistance to disease and insect pests, thus leading to the spraying men-ace in an effort to preserve these defective specimens.
It leads to diseases among animals and men who feed on these abnormal plants and their products.
It leads to a tremendous expense to the farmer, because chemical fertilizers, being extremely soluble, are quickly washed from the soil by rainfall and needs constant replacement. (Powdered rocks, on the other hand, being less soluble, are not so easily washed from the soil, but keep releasing minerals to it for many years).
* Decayed vegetable or animal matter that provides nutrients for plants.
The use of various pulverized rocks, [such] as granite, limestone, rock phosphate, etc., in place of chemical fertilizers, will lead, claimed Hensel, to permanent restoration of even poor soils to the balanced mineral con-tent of the best virgin soils; and the rock dust thus applied will remain year after year and not be washed away by rains or irrigation water, as is the case with highly soluble chemical fertilizers.
This will be an economic saving to the grower and enable him to sell foods at a lower price than when he must spend large sums on chemical fertilizers. Also, since foods thus mineralized are healthy and immune to plant diseases and insect pests (as Hensel experimentally demonstrated), there is no need for the expense and dangers of spraying.*
* Editor's Note: Rock phosphate from some sources contains a high level of the toxic mineral cadmium. It's wise to purchase rock phosphate from a supplier who's able to provide an analysis.
Foods raised by Hensel's followers, including many German gardeners and farmers, who were enthusiastic in praise of his method, were found to possess firmer tissue and better shipping and keeping qualities than those raised with animal manure or chemicals. And most important among the advantages of Hensel's agricultural discovery is that foods grown on mineralized soil are higher both in mineral and vitamin content and so pro-duce better health and greater immunity to disease than those grown by the use of chemical fertilizer sprays.
To kill insects by poisons applied to plants does not remove the cause of their infestation, and poisons both the insect as well as the human consumer of the sprayed plant. Only correct feeding of the soil, and consequently of plants by trees, by proper methods of fertilization, thereby keeping them well-nourished, vigorous and free from disease, will accomplish this, for insects do not seem to attack healthy plants. It appears that insects, like scavengers, attack chiefly unhealthy and demineralized plants, not healthy ones.
Dr. Charles Northern has performed experiments in which he raised two tomato plants, entwined with each other, in different pots, one being supplied with an abundance of trace minerals, derived from colloidal phosphate, and the other just chemical fertilizer. The tomato plant grown with chemical fertilizer alone was attacked by insects, while the other one given trace minerals was not.
Hensel pointed out that animal manure and chemical fertilizers produce a forced, unnaturally rapid growth of large-sized produce which fail to acquire the minerals normally secured during a slower, longer development. The result is the production of demineralized, unbalanced plants, which are weak and unhealthy, falling prey to disease and insect pests.
This explains why, coincident with the increased use of chemical fertilizers, during the past century, insect pests steadily increased. So did cancerous conditions among plants, animals and humans, as shown by Keens, an English soil chemist, who presents statistics to show that the increased use of chemical fertilizers is a major cause of the greater incidence of cancer during that last hundred years.
The modern Organic Farming movement has accepted and propagated one of Hensel's theories—his opposition to chemical fertilizers and recommendation of powdered rocks in their place—but has failed to appreciate his other main doctrine—his opposition to the use of animal excrement's as plant foods. In this respect, Hensel, though he lived in the last century, [was] far ahead of the Organic Movement and more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer.
Hensel had a great admirer and disciple in England, one Sampson Morgan, who founded his "Clean Culture" doctrine on Hensel's philosophy of soil and biological regeneration by the avoidance of chemical or animal fertilizers. While Hensel was more of a theorist, Morgan was a practical farmer and agricultural experimenter, who proved the truth of Hensel's theories by winning the first prize at all agricultural exhibits at which his super-sized, super-quality, disease - and blight - free rock-dust fertilized fruits and vegetables were displayed. In Sampson Morgan's Clean Culture, Morgan's views are presented.
In reality they are Hensel's doctrines transplanted to English soil. The reading of Morgan's book will be a valuable supplement to [the reading] of this, to give one a thorough understanding of the subject of Natural Agriculture (i.e., a system of soil culture definitely in advance of Organic Gardening by the compost method).
Practical experience with Hensel's Stone Meal and his non-animal method of soil regeneration, has proven the following:
That Stone Meal creates healthier, tastier, more vitaminized and mineralized foods.
That Stone Meal creates immunity to insect infestation, worms, fungi and plant diseases of all kinds.
That Stone Meal improves the keeping and shipping quality of foods, so that they keep a long time, in contrast to the rapid deterioration of foods given abundant animal manure.
That Stone Meal helps plants to resist drought and frost, enabling them to survive when those fed on manure and chemicals perish.
That Stone Meal produces larger crops which are more profitable because the farmer is saved the expense of buying chemical fertilizers which are rapidly leached from the soil by rainfall, whereas Stone Meal, being less soluble, is gradually released during the course of years and remain in the soil, being the most economical of fertilizers.
That foods raised with Stone Meal are better for human health and the prevention of disease than those grown with chemicals or animal manure.
That use of Stone Meal, in place of chemical or animal fertilizers, helps to end the spraying menace (by removing its cause) is proven by the fact that plants and trees grown with Stone Meal are immune to pests and so require no spraying.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/supressed_inventions/suppressed_inventions20.htm
It was the German agricultural chemist Liebig who first put forward the phosphorus-potash-nitrogen theory of chemical fertilization. This false doctrine Hensel bitterly attacked and in so doing, won the ire of the financial interests behind the sale of chemical fertilizers, which used agricultural authorities and university professors to denounce poor Hensel as a charlatan and his Stone Meal as worthless.
Though his fight against chemical fertilizers was a losing battle and he died as a defeated hero, it took a generation for Hensel's efforts to bear fruit in the modern Organic Movement, which has not given its founder the credit due him.
The fight between Liebig, advocate [of] one-sided chemical fertilization, and Hensel, who advocated a more balanced form of plant nutrition, including the trace minerals which Liebig completely overlooked, was a battle between an opportunist, who sought to further the sales of chemical fertilizers, and a true scientist, interested in humanity's welfare.
Though Liebig, with the Chemical Trust behind him, won the battle, Hensel's ideas finally triumphed... several decades after his passing.
Liebig claimed that plants require three main elements—nitrogen, phosphorus and potash—the basis of which conception chemical fertilizers were manufactured that supplied these elements. On the other hand, Hensel claimed that plants need many more than these three major elements, stressing the importance of the trace minerals, which at that time were ignored. In place of chemical fertilizers, supplying only three elements in an unnatural, caustic form, Hensel recommended the bland minerals of pulverized rocks, especially granite, a primordial rock which contains the many trace minerals that meet all needs of plant nutrition.
Hensel first made his discovery of powdered rock fertilization when he was a miller.
One day, while milling grain, he noticed that some stones were mixed with it and [he] ground [them] into a meal. He sprinkled this stone meal over the soil of his garden and was surprised to note how the vegetables took on a new, more vigorous growth. This led him to repeat the experiment by grinding more stones and applying the stone meal to fruit trees. Much to his surprise, apple trees that formerly bore wormy, imperfect fruit now produced fine quality fruit free from worms. Also vegetables fertilized by stone meal were free from insect pests and diseases. It seemed to be a complete plant food, which produced fine vegetables even in the poorest soil.
Encouraged by these results, Hensel put his "Stone Meal" on the market, and wrote extensively on its superiority over chemical fertilizers, while at the same time opposing the use of animal manure, and the nitrogen theory on which it is based, claiming that when plants are supplied with Stone Meal, plenty of water, air and sunshine, they will grow health-fully even if the soil is poor in nitrogen, since it was his belief that plants derive their nitrogen through their leaves, and do not depend on the soil for this element.
In opposing this use of chemical fertilizer, Hensel awoke the ire of a powerful enemy, which was resolved to liquidate him—the Chemical Trust. Through unfair competition, Hensel's "Stone Meal" business was destroyed and his product was taken off the market. However, the chief object of attack was his book, Bread From Stones, in which he expounded his new doctrines of Liebig on which the chemical fertilizer business was based, as well as the "Liebig meat extract." (For Hensel advocated vegetarianism, just as he advocated natural farming without chemicals or manure.)
Accordingly, his enemies succeeded in suppressing the further publication of this book and in removing it from libraries, until it became extremely rare and difficult to obtain. It is more fortunate that a surviving copy came into the writer's possession.
Dr. Julius Hensel was not only a student of agricultural chemistry, but also biochemistry and nutrition, and he related all these sciences, and united them into a composite science of life, which he labeled "Makro-biology." His theory was that the chemistry of life is basically determined by the chemistry of the soil, and that chemicals unbalance and pervert soil chemistry while powdered rocks help restore normal soil mineral balance, producing foods favorable to health and life.
His discoveries concerning the value of powdered rocks as soil conditioners and plant foods, though rejected and ridiculed when he first proposed them, were adopted by agricultural science nearly a century later, when the application of powdered limestone, rock phosphate and other rocks became standard agricultural practice. Granite, which Hensel recommended as the most balanced of all rocks as source of soil minerals, was first rejected as worthless, but later appreciated and used as a soil mineralizer.
During the course of his researches, Dr. Hensel found that in the primeval rocks, as granite, lie a potentially inexhaustible supply of all minerals required for the feeding and regeneration of the soil, plants, animals and man. All that is required is to reduce them to finely a pulverized form, so that their mineral elements may be made available to plants. Hensel wrote a book describing his discovery of a new method of creating more perfect fruits and vegetables, rich in all nutritional elements and immune to disease and insect pests, with the result that it produced worm-free fruit without the need of spraying. The foods so produced by rock-meal fertilization were true Organic Super Foods, far superior in flavor and value than those produced under the forcing action of manure or chemical fertilizers.
Hensel was the first to put up a fight against the then-growing new chemical fertilizer industry—a struggle that was continued in the next century by Sir William Howard in England and J. I. Rodale in America.
The use of chemical fertilizers, claimed Hensel, leads to the following evil consequences:
It poisons the soil, destroying beneficial soil bacteria, earthworms and humus. *
It creates unhealthy, unbalanced, mineral-deficient plants, lacking resistance to disease and insect pests, thus leading to the spraying men-ace in an effort to preserve these defective specimens.
It leads to diseases among animals and men who feed on these abnormal plants and their products.
It leads to a tremendous expense to the farmer, because chemical fertilizers, being extremely soluble, are quickly washed from the soil by rainfall and needs constant replacement. (Powdered rocks, on the other hand, being less soluble, are not so easily washed from the soil, but keep releasing minerals to it for many years).
* Decayed vegetable or animal matter that provides nutrients for plants.
The use of various pulverized rocks, [such] as granite, limestone, rock phosphate, etc., in place of chemical fertilizers, will lead, claimed Hensel, to permanent restoration of even poor soils to the balanced mineral con-tent of the best virgin soils; and the rock dust thus applied will remain year after year and not be washed away by rains or irrigation water, as is the case with highly soluble chemical fertilizers.
This will be an economic saving to the grower and enable him to sell foods at a lower price than when he must spend large sums on chemical fertilizers. Also, since foods thus mineralized are healthy and immune to plant diseases and insect pests (as Hensel experimentally demonstrated), there is no need for the expense and dangers of spraying.*
* Editor's Note: Rock phosphate from some sources contains a high level of the toxic mineral cadmium. It's wise to purchase rock phosphate from a supplier who's able to provide an analysis.
Foods raised by Hensel's followers, including many German gardeners and farmers, who were enthusiastic in praise of his method, were found to possess firmer tissue and better shipping and keeping qualities than those raised with animal manure or chemicals. And most important among the advantages of Hensel's agricultural discovery is that foods grown on mineralized soil are higher both in mineral and vitamin content and so pro-duce better health and greater immunity to disease than those grown by the use of chemical fertilizer sprays.
To kill insects by poisons applied to plants does not remove the cause of their infestation, and poisons both the insect as well as the human consumer of the sprayed plant. Only correct feeding of the soil, and consequently of plants by trees, by proper methods of fertilization, thereby keeping them well-nourished, vigorous and free from disease, will accomplish this, for insects do not seem to attack healthy plants. It appears that insects, like scavengers, attack chiefly unhealthy and demineralized plants, not healthy ones.
Dr. Charles Northern has performed experiments in which he raised two tomato plants, entwined with each other, in different pots, one being supplied with an abundance of trace minerals, derived from colloidal phosphate, and the other just chemical fertilizer. The tomato plant grown with chemical fertilizer alone was attacked by insects, while the other one given trace minerals was not.
Hensel pointed out that animal manure and chemical fertilizers produce a forced, unnaturally rapid growth of large-sized produce which fail to acquire the minerals normally secured during a slower, longer development. The result is the production of demineralized, unbalanced plants, which are weak and unhealthy, falling prey to disease and insect pests.
This explains why, coincident with the increased use of chemical fertilizers, during the past century, insect pests steadily increased. So did cancerous conditions among plants, animals and humans, as shown by Keens, an English soil chemist, who presents statistics to show that the increased use of chemical fertilizers is a major cause of the greater incidence of cancer during that last hundred years.
The modern Organic Farming movement has accepted and propagated one of Hensel's theories—his opposition to chemical fertilizers and recommendation of powdered rocks in their place—but has failed to appreciate his other main doctrine—his opposition to the use of animal excrement's as plant foods. In this respect, Hensel, though he lived in the last century, [was] far ahead of the Organic Movement and more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer.
Hensel had a great admirer and disciple in England, one Sampson Morgan, who founded his "Clean Culture" doctrine on Hensel's philosophy of soil and biological regeneration by the avoidance of chemical or animal fertilizers. While Hensel was more of a theorist, Morgan was a practical farmer and agricultural experimenter, who proved the truth of Hensel's theories by winning the first prize at all agricultural exhibits at which his super-sized, super-quality, disease - and blight - free rock-dust fertilized fruits and vegetables were displayed. In Sampson Morgan's Clean Culture, Morgan's views are presented.
In reality they are Hensel's doctrines transplanted to English soil. The reading of Morgan's book will be a valuable supplement to [the reading] of this, to give one a thorough understanding of the subject of Natural Agriculture (i.e., a system of soil culture definitely in advance of Organic Gardening by the compost method).
Practical experience with Hensel's Stone Meal and his non-animal method of soil regeneration, has proven the following:
That Stone Meal creates healthier, tastier, more vitaminized and mineralized foods.
That Stone Meal creates immunity to insect infestation, worms, fungi and plant diseases of all kinds.
That Stone Meal improves the keeping and shipping quality of foods, so that they keep a long time, in contrast to the rapid deterioration of foods given abundant animal manure.
That Stone Meal helps plants to resist drought and frost, enabling them to survive when those fed on manure and chemicals perish.
That Stone Meal produces larger crops which are more profitable because the farmer is saved the expense of buying chemical fertilizers which are rapidly leached from the soil by rainfall, whereas Stone Meal, being less soluble, is gradually released during the course of years and remain in the soil, being the most economical of fertilizers.
That foods raised with Stone Meal are better for human health and the prevention of disease than those grown with chemicals or animal manure.
That use of Stone Meal, in place of chemical or animal fertilizers, helps to end the spraying menace (by removing its cause) is proven by the fact that plants and trees grown with Stone Meal are immune to pests and so require no spraying.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/supressed_inventions/suppressed_inventions20.htm
Dr. Julius Hensel
Dr. Julius Hensel was the greatest figure in the history of agricultural chemistry even if his powerful enemies, members of the octopus chemical fertilizer trust, have succeeded in suppressing his memory, destroying his books and getting his Stone Meal fertilizer off the market. But eventually the truth comes to the fore, and its enemies are vanquished. Julius Hensel's pioneer work in opposing the use of chemicals in agriculture, a half a century later, found rebirth in the Organic Movement which has swept through the world. But Hensel is more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer, for he claimed, on the basis of theoretical chemical considerations, and supported by practical tests, that his Stone Meal can replace not only chemical fertilizers but all animal ones as well.
It was the German agricultural chemist Liebig who first put forward the phosphorus-potash-nitrogen theory of chemical fertilization. This false doctrine Hensel bitterly attacked and in so doing, won the ire of the financial interests behind the sale of chemical fertilizers, which used agricultural authorities and university professors to denounce poor Hensel as a charlatan and his Stone Meal as worthless.
Though his fight against chemical fertilizers was a losing battle and he died as a defeated hero, it took a generation for Hensel's efforts to bear fruit in the modern Organic Movement, which has not given its founder the credit due him.
The fight between Liebig, advocate [of] one-sided chemical fertilization, and Hensel, who advocated a more balanced form of plant nutrition, including the trace minerals which Liebig completely overlooked, was a battle between an opportunist, who sought to further the sales of chemical fertilizers, and a true scientist, interested in humanity's welfare.
Though Liebig, with the Chemical Trust behind him, won the battle, Hensel's ideas finally triumphed... several decades after his passing.
Liebig claimed that plants require three main elements—nitrogen, phosphorus and potash—the basis of which conception chemical fertilizers were manufactured that supplied these elements. On the other hand, Hensel claimed that plants need many more than these three major elements, stressing the importance of the trace minerals, which at that time were ignored. In place of chemical fertilizers, supplying only three elements in an unnatural, caustic form, Hensel recommended the bland minerals of pulverized rocks, especially granite, a primordial rock which contains the many trace minerals that meet all needs of plant nutrition.
Hensel first made his discovery of powdered rock fertilization when he was a miller.
One day, while milling grain, he noticed that some stones were mixed with it and [he] ground [them] into a meal. He sprinkled this stone meal over the soil of his garden and was surprised to note how the vegetables took on a new, more vigorous growth. This led him to repeat the experiment by grinding more stones and applying the stone meal to fruit trees. Much to his surprise, apple trees that formerly bore wormy, imperfect fruit now produced fine quality fruit free from worms. Also vegetables fertilized by stone meal were free from insect pests and diseases. It seemed to be a complete plant food, which produced fine vegetables even in the poorest soil.
Encouraged by these results, Hensel put his "Stone Meal" on the market, and wrote extensively on its superiority over chemical fertilizers, while at the same time opposing the use of animal manure, and the nitrogen theory on which it is based, claiming that when plants are supplied with Stone Meal, plenty of water, air and sunshine, they will grow health-fully even if the soil is poor in nitrogen, since it was his belief that plants derive their nitrogen through their leaves, and do not depend on the soil for this element.
In opposing this use of chemical fertilizer, Hensel awoke the ire of a powerful enemy, which was resolved to liquidate him—the Chemical Trust. Through unfair competition, Hensel's "Stone Meal" business was destroyed and his product was taken off the market. However, the chief object of attack was his book, Bread From Stones, in which he expounded his new doctrines of Liebig on which the chemical fertilizer business was based, as well as the "Liebig meat extract." (For Hensel advocated vegetarianism, just as he advocated natural farming without chemicals or manure.)
Accordingly, his enemies succeeded in suppressing the further publication of this book and in removing it from libraries, until it became extremely rare and difficult to obtain. It is more fortunate that a surviving copy came into the writer's possession.
Dr. Julius Hensel was not only a student of agricultural chemistry, but also biochemistry and nutrition, and he related all these sciences, and united them into a composite science of life, which he labeled "Makro-biology." His theory was that the chemistry of life is basically determined by the chemistry of the soil, and that chemicals unbalance and pervert soil chemistry while powdered rocks help restore normal soil mineral balance, producing foods favorable to health and life.
His discoveries concerning the value of powdered rocks as soil conditioners and plant foods, though rejected and ridiculed when he first proposed them, were adopted by agricultural science nearly a century later, when the application of powdered limestone, rock phosphate and other rocks became standard agricultural practice. Granite, which Hensel recommended as the most balanced of all rocks as source of soil minerals, was first rejected as worthless, but later appreciated and used as a soil mineralizer.
During the course of his researches, Dr. Hensel found that in the primeval rocks, as granite, lie a potentially inexhaustible supply of all minerals required for the feeding and regeneration of the soil, plants, animals and man. All that is required is to reduce them to finely a pulverized form, so that their mineral elements may be made available to plants. Hensel wrote a book describing his discovery of a new method of creating more perfect fruits and vegetables, rich in all nutritional elements and immune to disease and insect pests, with the result that it produced worm-free fruit without the need of spraying. The foods so produced by rock-meal fertilization were true Organic Super Foods, far superior in flavor and value than those produced under the forcing action of manure or chemical fertilizers.
Hensel was the first to put up a fight against the then-growing new chemical fertilizer industry—a struggle that was continued in the next century by Sir William Howard in England and J. I. Rodale in America.
The use of chemical fertilizers, claimed Hensel, leads to the following evil consequences:
It poisons the soil, destroying beneficial soil bacteria, earthworms and humus. *
It creates unhealthy, unbalanced, mineral-deficient plants, lacking resistance to disease and insect pests, thus leading to the spraying men-ace in an effort to preserve these defective specimens.
It leads to diseases among animals and men who feed on these abnormal plants and their products.
It leads to a tremendous expense to the farmer, because chemical fertilizers, being extremely soluble, are quickly washed from the soil by rainfall and needs constant replacement. (Powdered rocks, on the other hand, being less soluble, are not so easily washed from the soil, but keep releasing minerals to it for many years).
* Decayed vegetable or animal matter that provides nutrients for plants.
The use of various pulverized rocks, [such] as granite, limestone, rock phosphate, etc., in place of chemical fertilizers, will lead, claimed Hensel, to permanent restoration of even poor soils to the balanced mineral con-tent of the best virgin soils; and the rock dust thus applied will remain year after year and not be washed away by rains or irrigation water, as is the case with highly soluble chemical fertilizers.
This will be an economic saving to the grower and enable him to sell foods at a lower price than when he must spend large sums on chemical fertilizers. Also, since foods thus mineralized are healthy and immune to plant diseases and insect pests (as Hensel experimentally demonstrated), there is no need for the expense and dangers of spraying.*
* Editor's Note: Rock phosphate from some sources contains a high level of the toxic mineral cadmium. It's wise to purchase rock phosphate from a supplier who's able to provide an analysis.
Foods raised by Hensel's followers, including many German gardeners and farmers, who were enthusiastic in praise of his method, were found to possess firmer tissue and better shipping and keeping qualities than those raised with animal manure or chemicals. And most important among the advantages of Hensel's agricultural discovery is that foods grown on mineralized soil are higher both in mineral and vitamin content and so pro-duce better health and greater immunity to disease than those grown by the use of chemical fertilizer sprays.
To kill insects by poisons applied to plants does not remove the cause of their infestation, and poisons both the insect as well as the human consumer of the sprayed plant. Only correct feeding of the soil, and consequently of plants by trees, by proper methods of fertilization, thereby keeping them well-nourished, vigorous and free from disease, will accomplish this, for insects do not seem to attack healthy plants. It appears that insects, like scavengers, attack chiefly unhealthy and demineralized plants, not healthy ones.
Dr. Charles Northern has performed experiments in which he raised two tomato plants, entwined with each other, in different pots, one being supplied with an abundance of trace minerals, derived from colloidal phosphate, and the other just chemical fertilizer. The tomato plant grown with chemical fertilizer alone was attacked by insects, while the other one given trace minerals was not.
Hensel pointed out that animal manure and chemical fertilizers produce a forced, unnaturally rapid growth of large-sized produce which fail to acquire the minerals normally secured during a slower, longer development. The result is the production of demineralized, unbalanced plants, which are weak and unhealthy, falling prey to disease and insect pests.
This explains why, coincident with the increased use of chemical fertilizers, during the past century, insect pests steadily increased. So did cancerous conditions among plants, animals and humans, as shown by Keens, an English soil chemist, who presents statistics to show that the increased use of chemical fertilizers is a major cause of the greater incidence of cancer during that last hundred years.
The modern Organic Farming movement has accepted and propagated one of Hensel's theories—his opposition to chemical fertilizers and recommendation of powdered rocks in their place—but has failed to appreciate his other main doctrine—his opposition to the use of animal excrement's as plant foods. In this respect, Hensel, though he lived in the last century, [was] far ahead of the Organic Movement and more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer.
Hensel had a great admirer and disciple in England, one Sampson Morgan, who founded his "Clean Culture" doctrine on Hensel's philosophy of soil and biological regeneration by the avoidance of chemical or animal fertilizers. While Hensel was more of a theorist, Morgan was a practical farmer and agricultural experimenter, who proved the truth of Hensel's theories by winning the first prize at all agricultural exhibits at which his super-sized, super-quality, disease - and blight - free rock-dust fertilized fruits and vegetables were displayed. In Sampson Morgan's Clean Culture, Morgan's views are presented.
In reality they are Hensel's doctrines transplanted to English soil. The reading of Morgan's book will be a valuable supplement to [the reading] of this, to give one a thorough understanding of the subject of Natural Agriculture (i.e., a system of soil culture definitely in advance of Organic Gardening by the compost method).
Practical experience with Hensel's Stone Meal and his non-animal method of soil regeneration, has proven the following:
That Stone Meal creates healthier, tastier, more vitaminized and mineralized foods.
That Stone Meal creates immunity to insect infestation, worms, fungi and plant diseases of all kinds.
That Stone Meal improves the keeping and shipping quality of foods, so that they keep a long time, in contrast to the rapid deterioration of foods given abundant animal manure.
That Stone Meal helps plants to resist drought and frost, enabling them to survive when those fed on manure and chemicals perish.
That Stone Meal produces larger crops which are more profitable because the farmer is saved the expense of buying chemical fertilizers which are rapidly leached from the soil by rainfall, whereas Stone Meal, being less soluble, is gradually released during the course of years and remain in the soil, being the most economical of fertilizers.
That foods raised with Stone Meal are better for human health and the prevention of disease than those grown with chemicals or animal manure.
That use of Stone Meal, in place of chemical or animal fertilizers, helps to end the spraying menace (by removing its cause) is proven by the fact that plants and trees grown with Stone Meal are immune to pests and so require no spraying.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/supressed_inventions/suppressed_inventions20.htm
It was the German agricultural chemist Liebig who first put forward the phosphorus-potash-nitrogen theory of chemical fertilization. This false doctrine Hensel bitterly attacked and in so doing, won the ire of the financial interests behind the sale of chemical fertilizers, which used agricultural authorities and university professors to denounce poor Hensel as a charlatan and his Stone Meal as worthless.
Though his fight against chemical fertilizers was a losing battle and he died as a defeated hero, it took a generation for Hensel's efforts to bear fruit in the modern Organic Movement, which has not given its founder the credit due him.
The fight between Liebig, advocate [of] one-sided chemical fertilization, and Hensel, who advocated a more balanced form of plant nutrition, including the trace minerals which Liebig completely overlooked, was a battle between an opportunist, who sought to further the sales of chemical fertilizers, and a true scientist, interested in humanity's welfare.
Though Liebig, with the Chemical Trust behind him, won the battle, Hensel's ideas finally triumphed... several decades after his passing.
Liebig claimed that plants require three main elements—nitrogen, phosphorus and potash—the basis of which conception chemical fertilizers were manufactured that supplied these elements. On the other hand, Hensel claimed that plants need many more than these three major elements, stressing the importance of the trace minerals, which at that time were ignored. In place of chemical fertilizers, supplying only three elements in an unnatural, caustic form, Hensel recommended the bland minerals of pulverized rocks, especially granite, a primordial rock which contains the many trace minerals that meet all needs of plant nutrition.
Hensel first made his discovery of powdered rock fertilization when he was a miller.
One day, while milling grain, he noticed that some stones were mixed with it and [he] ground [them] into a meal. He sprinkled this stone meal over the soil of his garden and was surprised to note how the vegetables took on a new, more vigorous growth. This led him to repeat the experiment by grinding more stones and applying the stone meal to fruit trees. Much to his surprise, apple trees that formerly bore wormy, imperfect fruit now produced fine quality fruit free from worms. Also vegetables fertilized by stone meal were free from insect pests and diseases. It seemed to be a complete plant food, which produced fine vegetables even in the poorest soil.
Encouraged by these results, Hensel put his "Stone Meal" on the market, and wrote extensively on its superiority over chemical fertilizers, while at the same time opposing the use of animal manure, and the nitrogen theory on which it is based, claiming that when plants are supplied with Stone Meal, plenty of water, air and sunshine, they will grow health-fully even if the soil is poor in nitrogen, since it was his belief that plants derive their nitrogen through their leaves, and do not depend on the soil for this element.
In opposing this use of chemical fertilizer, Hensel awoke the ire of a powerful enemy, which was resolved to liquidate him—the Chemical Trust. Through unfair competition, Hensel's "Stone Meal" business was destroyed and his product was taken off the market. However, the chief object of attack was his book, Bread From Stones, in which he expounded his new doctrines of Liebig on which the chemical fertilizer business was based, as well as the "Liebig meat extract." (For Hensel advocated vegetarianism, just as he advocated natural farming without chemicals or manure.)
Accordingly, his enemies succeeded in suppressing the further publication of this book and in removing it from libraries, until it became extremely rare and difficult to obtain. It is more fortunate that a surviving copy came into the writer's possession.
Dr. Julius Hensel was not only a student of agricultural chemistry, but also biochemistry and nutrition, and he related all these sciences, and united them into a composite science of life, which he labeled "Makro-biology." His theory was that the chemistry of life is basically determined by the chemistry of the soil, and that chemicals unbalance and pervert soil chemistry while powdered rocks help restore normal soil mineral balance, producing foods favorable to health and life.
His discoveries concerning the value of powdered rocks as soil conditioners and plant foods, though rejected and ridiculed when he first proposed them, were adopted by agricultural science nearly a century later, when the application of powdered limestone, rock phosphate and other rocks became standard agricultural practice. Granite, which Hensel recommended as the most balanced of all rocks as source of soil minerals, was first rejected as worthless, but later appreciated and used as a soil mineralizer.
During the course of his researches, Dr. Hensel found that in the primeval rocks, as granite, lie a potentially inexhaustible supply of all minerals required for the feeding and regeneration of the soil, plants, animals and man. All that is required is to reduce them to finely a pulverized form, so that their mineral elements may be made available to plants. Hensel wrote a book describing his discovery of a new method of creating more perfect fruits and vegetables, rich in all nutritional elements and immune to disease and insect pests, with the result that it produced worm-free fruit without the need of spraying. The foods so produced by rock-meal fertilization were true Organic Super Foods, far superior in flavor and value than those produced under the forcing action of manure or chemical fertilizers.
Hensel was the first to put up a fight against the then-growing new chemical fertilizer industry—a struggle that was continued in the next century by Sir William Howard in England and J. I. Rodale in America.
The use of chemical fertilizers, claimed Hensel, leads to the following evil consequences:
It poisons the soil, destroying beneficial soil bacteria, earthworms and humus. *
It creates unhealthy, unbalanced, mineral-deficient plants, lacking resistance to disease and insect pests, thus leading to the spraying men-ace in an effort to preserve these defective specimens.
It leads to diseases among animals and men who feed on these abnormal plants and their products.
It leads to a tremendous expense to the farmer, because chemical fertilizers, being extremely soluble, are quickly washed from the soil by rainfall and needs constant replacement. (Powdered rocks, on the other hand, being less soluble, are not so easily washed from the soil, but keep releasing minerals to it for many years).
* Decayed vegetable or animal matter that provides nutrients for plants.
The use of various pulverized rocks, [such] as granite, limestone, rock phosphate, etc., in place of chemical fertilizers, will lead, claimed Hensel, to permanent restoration of even poor soils to the balanced mineral con-tent of the best virgin soils; and the rock dust thus applied will remain year after year and not be washed away by rains or irrigation water, as is the case with highly soluble chemical fertilizers.
This will be an economic saving to the grower and enable him to sell foods at a lower price than when he must spend large sums on chemical fertilizers. Also, since foods thus mineralized are healthy and immune to plant diseases and insect pests (as Hensel experimentally demonstrated), there is no need for the expense and dangers of spraying.*
* Editor's Note: Rock phosphate from some sources contains a high level of the toxic mineral cadmium. It's wise to purchase rock phosphate from a supplier who's able to provide an analysis.
Foods raised by Hensel's followers, including many German gardeners and farmers, who were enthusiastic in praise of his method, were found to possess firmer tissue and better shipping and keeping qualities than those raised with animal manure or chemicals. And most important among the advantages of Hensel's agricultural discovery is that foods grown on mineralized soil are higher both in mineral and vitamin content and so pro-duce better health and greater immunity to disease than those grown by the use of chemical fertilizer sprays.
To kill insects by poisons applied to plants does not remove the cause of their infestation, and poisons both the insect as well as the human consumer of the sprayed plant. Only correct feeding of the soil, and consequently of plants by trees, by proper methods of fertilization, thereby keeping them well-nourished, vigorous and free from disease, will accomplish this, for insects do not seem to attack healthy plants. It appears that insects, like scavengers, attack chiefly unhealthy and demineralized plants, not healthy ones.
Dr. Charles Northern has performed experiments in which he raised two tomato plants, entwined with each other, in different pots, one being supplied with an abundance of trace minerals, derived from colloidal phosphate, and the other just chemical fertilizer. The tomato plant grown with chemical fertilizer alone was attacked by insects, while the other one given trace minerals was not.
Hensel pointed out that animal manure and chemical fertilizers produce a forced, unnaturally rapid growth of large-sized produce which fail to acquire the minerals normally secured during a slower, longer development. The result is the production of demineralized, unbalanced plants, which are weak and unhealthy, falling prey to disease and insect pests.
This explains why, coincident with the increased use of chemical fertilizers, during the past century, insect pests steadily increased. So did cancerous conditions among plants, animals and humans, as shown by Keens, an English soil chemist, who presents statistics to show that the increased use of chemical fertilizers is a major cause of the greater incidence of cancer during that last hundred years.
The modern Organic Farming movement has accepted and propagated one of Hensel's theories—his opposition to chemical fertilizers and recommendation of powdered rocks in their place—but has failed to appreciate his other main doctrine—his opposition to the use of animal excrement's as plant foods. In this respect, Hensel, though he lived in the last century, [was] far ahead of the Organic Movement and more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer.
Hensel had a great admirer and disciple in England, one Sampson Morgan, who founded his "Clean Culture" doctrine on Hensel's philosophy of soil and biological regeneration by the avoidance of chemical or animal fertilizers. While Hensel was more of a theorist, Morgan was a practical farmer and agricultural experimenter, who proved the truth of Hensel's theories by winning the first prize at all agricultural exhibits at which his super-sized, super-quality, disease - and blight - free rock-dust fertilized fruits and vegetables were displayed. In Sampson Morgan's Clean Culture, Morgan's views are presented.
In reality they are Hensel's doctrines transplanted to English soil. The reading of Morgan's book will be a valuable supplement to [the reading] of this, to give one a thorough understanding of the subject of Natural Agriculture (i.e., a system of soil culture definitely in advance of Organic Gardening by the compost method).
Practical experience with Hensel's Stone Meal and his non-animal method of soil regeneration, has proven the following:
That Stone Meal creates healthier, tastier, more vitaminized and mineralized foods.
That Stone Meal creates immunity to insect infestation, worms, fungi and plant diseases of all kinds.
That Stone Meal improves the keeping and shipping quality of foods, so that they keep a long time, in contrast to the rapid deterioration of foods given abundant animal manure.
That Stone Meal helps plants to resist drought and frost, enabling them to survive when those fed on manure and chemicals perish.
That Stone Meal produces larger crops which are more profitable because the farmer is saved the expense of buying chemical fertilizers which are rapidly leached from the soil by rainfall, whereas Stone Meal, being less soluble, is gradually released during the course of years and remain in the soil, being the most economical of fertilizers.
That foods raised with Stone Meal are better for human health and the prevention of disease than those grown with chemicals or animal manure.
That use of Stone Meal, in place of chemical or animal fertilizers, helps to end the spraying menace (by removing its cause) is proven by the fact that plants and trees grown with Stone Meal are immune to pests and so require no spraying.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/supressed_inventions/suppressed_inventions20.htm
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Healing disease
Whether you are faced with cancer, arthritis, emphysema, colitis, multiple sclerosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, or any other of the multitude of acute or chronic degenerative diseases, you will undergo healing.
http://www.treating-cancer-alternatively.com/Coffee-enemas.html
http://www.treating-cancer-alternatively.com/Coffee-enemas.html
Healing disease
Whether you are faced with cancer, arthritis, emphysema, colitis, multiple sclerosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, or any other of the multitude of acute or chronic degenerative diseases, you will undergo healing.
http://www.treating-cancer-alternatively.com/Coffee-enemas.html
http://www.treating-cancer-alternatively.com/Coffee-enemas.html
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