12 Steps to Whole Foods

Avoiding Bad Fats, Enjoying Good Fats
How Can I Eat Coconut, Olive, and Flax Oils?
This is an easy and fun step in month 4 of your 12 Steps, because some of the coconut oil recipes are snacks
and treats, and flax oil can be easily added to salad dressings (replacing ¼ of the olive oil) and green smoothies
you’re already making. The recipes in this chapter will give you new ideas, and Chapter 11 has plenty of ideas
to use coconut oil in treats, as well.
Coconut Oil
This oil is excellent for frying, baking, desserts, popcorn, and “buttering” whole-grain toast. Substitute for
butter or shortening in any cookie recipe, using it in its solid form.
Coconut oil doesn’t work well in salad dressings (or in things that are cold, such as green smoothies). That’s
because it becomes solid in the refrigerator (lower than 76°), and unprocessed oil has a strong coconut flavor.
Some of the main dishes in Chapter 6 use small amounts of coconut oil, which you can replace with olive oil if
you don’t like the slight taste of coconut in the food.
You can use coconut oil as a solid fat (like shortening) or as a liquid oil.If your home is colder than 76°, and
you want liquid oil, don’t microwave it (which kills nutrition with radiation). Instead, just put your bucket of
coconut oil in a sink with a couple of inches of hot tap water for a few minutes until enough oil becomes liquid
to pour out.
Several coconut products are in the recipes in this book. However, while they are all good for you, these are the
coconut products you should use, in order of highest to lowest nutrition:
1. Raw young coconut meat and liquid (perfect electrolyte balance, completely raw and unprocessed—see
my GreenSmoothieGirl YouTube video on how to open them: www.tiny.cc/3X3Xi)
2. Extra virgin, organic coconut oil
3. Coconut cream concentrate
4. Dried coconut, shreds or flakes (from a good source, not the sweetened kind containing the toxic
chemical propylene glycol)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
This oil is rich in oleic acid and antioxidants and is an excellent salad oil. It is comprised of long-chain fatty
acids that contribute to body fat, so use it in moderation. Use olive oil for salad dressings, as well as for
sautéing when you don’t like your food to have a slight coconut flavor. The greener your olive oil is, the more
nutritious and unprocessed it is—so don’t buy olive oil that doesn’t say “extra virgin.” Extra virgin means that
the oil came from the first pressing of the olives and is not heat treated.
Flaxseed Oil
This oil is best added to a green smoothie. I put a couple of tablespoons in my blenderful every day, unless I
will be eating flax crackers with my smoothie for lunch. The other way to use flaxseed oil is to replace a little
of the olive oil in salad dressings with flaxseed oil instead. Do not heat flaxseed oil.
102 12 Steps to Whole Foods
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw