The Raw Food Diet – How People Turn it into Something Evil or “Voodoo medicine”

I was reading through a review of Carol Alt’s book Eating in the Raw. Of course there was one negative review. And on top of it, this person is clearly “outraged.” This is the kind of misinformation I see all the time. People who haven’t done their research but of course, know it all. I’ve seen the results of the standard American diet. Just look around when you’re at Walmart. The walking dead. If they are strong enough to walk on their own and not use a scooter. (95 year-olds should be able to easily walk on their own unassisted.) Now let me list this review and follow with my reply.

Posted 07/13/07: Ms. Alt is dead wrong about how healthy raw foods are. ‘Raw’ does not mean safe or bacteria-free. Ask the mothers whose babies died after they ate soft cheeses made with unpasteurized milk. They had spontaneous abortions when they contracted Listeria monocytogenes. Ask the fathers of toddlers whose children died or went into kidney failure after they ate raw or undercooked ground meat contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Ask the families of diabetics who ate raw oysters and died from a Vibrio vulnificus infection. Ask the families of senior citizens who drank high protein shakes made from raw eggs and nearly died from Salmonella enteriditis. People have cooked food for thousands of years not because it tastes better, but because raw animal foods are often not safe to eat raw. The heat of cooking or pasteurization kills dangerous bacteria. Raw animal foods are NOT safer or healthier, they are DEADLY. I know. I’ve spent 20 years as a food safety professional. But don’t just take my word for it. Every respected public health authority in the U.S. – CDC, FDA, USDA – will tell you this. Try doing a search on their websites using the terms ‘raw milk’, ‘raw oysters’, or ‘raw eggs’. Following Ms. Alt’s advice could kill you!

It’s true. Raw food is not bacteria free. No food is bacteria free. Just because it comes in a bottle or a package, does not make it free of bacteria either. The difference is that on the raw food lifestyle, your body is a fine tuned machine that can snuff out any disease with ease. On a processed cooked food diet, most of the enzymes and nutrients are destroyed by cooking. Therefore, the body is weak and unable to destroy disease. The only time I EVER get sick, is when I’ve gone off the road and eaten a processed, cooked vegan meal. It usually takes me 3 days of fasting, along with a few more days of raw vegan eating, to clear this out of my system and start to feel normal again. One meal of cooked food can do a lot of damage.

Mothers should NOT be feeding their babies soft cheese made with cow’s milk. DUH. Cow’s milk is designed for cows, not human consumption. No human should be eating cow’s milk, unless they have four stomachs. Of course human babies will get sick. Raw meat? Raw foodists don’t eat meat. I’ve heard of a few raw foodists who consume raw cow’s milk, but it’s rare. And I don’t recommend it. Carol does not recommend consuming meat or dairy, raw or cooked. Raw oysters? Same deal. Raw vegans don’t eat these. This person is so uninformed I can’t believe the confidence in her writing style. Raw eggs in protein shakes? Again, raw foodists don’t eat eggs. She doesn’t talk about produce, which raw vegans exclusively eat!

People have cooked food for thousands of years because food isn’t safe to eat? What about the MILLIONS of years before they started cooking? What about every other animal on the planet, none of them cook anything. Bacteria are only unsafe if you have a wrecked immune system because of cooked, processed “damaged” food sources. I’ve never had a single instance of eating raw produce, and gotten sick.

Don’t believe the CDC, FDA and USDA on this topic. Lobbyists, the meat industry, the dairy industry, politicians, these are the people that direct the rules because they have millions of dollars to manipulate the system. Of course, most of the food this person is talking about is food the raw foodist wouldn’t touch anyhow.

Bacteria is a REQUIREMENT for optimum health. Without it, your digestive system will collapse.

Every time someone starts to make progress against the standard American diet, someone like this comes along and scares people. If I could personally have a conversation with every single one of these people, I could change the world. But I’m only one person.

 

Check Out This Incredible Photo of the “First Raw Eater – 20th Century”

This is the back cover of the book Raw Eating, by A. T. Hovannessian. I believe this is out of print and only available if you can find someone that has a copy laying around from the year 2000 when it was last printed. I found this book by complete accident. One of my favorite raw food books is Nature’s First Law: The Raw Food Diet by David Wolfe/Stephen Arlin/Fouaad Dini. I was Googling around trying to figure out what happened to Arlin and Dini, because everyone in the raw food world knows all about David Wolfe, but not the others. I kept finding websites talking about how these three “lifted” a lot of their book information directly from Raw Eating. My thought was, if I liked First Law, I might as well go back to the original source and get the most accurate description of the raw food lifestyle. I found a copy of the book. I love the back cover. Though I haven’t gotten into the book yet, supposedly Hovannessian had two daughters that both died young. He did research and realized it might be because they are eating cooked food. So he raised daughter #3 exclusively on living raw food. And she had perfect health. She’s the one on the back cover.

Right off the bat, it’s totally obvious in the first paragraph of both books, Wolfe/Arlin/Dini copied the text and changed each word to something similar. Remember how we all did this in college? If you don’t copy it exactly, it’s not really copying? I chalk this up to being young and “green.” But just by writing through Raw Eating, you become an expert. It’s an excellent foundation. I don’t blame these guys. Had they not created this book, I would have never found it, or the second book. I found my copy of Nature’s First Law in a used bookstore in Tucson, AZ. I just didn’t realize at the time, the information was pulled through from another source. All good, I mean, THE BEST information out there on raw eating.

 

I Now Have a Twitter Account – VeganTalk

This account will be more of a daily review of what I’ve read, links to interesting (or scary) news articles, scientific data and a brief journal. Click here to follow.

In other words, shorter clips of information.

 

If you have heart disease, should you avoid consuming all oils?

(This is a response I gave to a question. But it’s good information so I’m giving it a full blog entry.)

It’s hard to answer this question without knowing the full context of why it’s being asked. Heart disease in terms of plaque accumulation is caused by eating a high-fat diet. It’s usually caused by foods like butter, that start out solid, then melt, then are able to re-solidify to the walls of your blood vessels. If you remove all meat and dairy from your diet, which has the types of fats that accumulate, you’ll immediately reduce your risk of a heart attack by about 86%. (If you already have heart disease.) And if you do have a heart attack, it won’t be as severe. If someone had a severe case of atheromatous plaque, and they remove all the oil from their diet, it wouldn’t hurt anything because fat is in plant matter. You do need fat to live. If you did an immediate change of diet (to raw vegan), olive oil wouldn’t be an issue because the body would “self correct” on its own and could easily handle a milder type of fat. If you don’t change your diet, and you’re on the verge of having a heart attack, you’re already consuming a hefty amount of bad fat so the olive oil isn’t helping matters. I’m also talking about olive oil that isn’t cooked (raw) and isn’t processed in a way that removes the benefits. (Bariani brand) My recommendation for people with heart disease is to 1. remove all meat and dairy, eating only healthy fats (like say avocados) 2. consume 3-4 glasses of red wine a week (men only, this dissolves the plaque off your arteries) and 3. exercise regularly (which also helps flush out the plaque). 1-2 tablespoons of raw olive oil a day is good for you!

 

Someone recently asked me how to approach eating when you have been diagnosed with cancer

Because this message can be helpful to many other people, I decided to post my response. After I wrote this, I did a Youtube search for “raw vegan + cancer” and this video popped up. It so closely mirrors what I said I have to put it in this article.

(Copy of letter)

Here’s an overview of what I’d recommend. Keep in mind it’s a big learning curve. Once you start changing the eating habits, in about two months you’ll do it without second thought.

-Remove all meat and dairy from your diet. Check labels to make sure milk isn’t hidden as something else like cassein in a product. Milk proteins are fertilizer for cancer cells. Yogurt falls under dairy. You can add meat substitutes like veggie burgers, in moderation, to your diet for variety. Make sure they don’t list “MILK” as part of the ingredient list. Look for words like VEGAN on the box. If you switch to soy / almond / rice milk to replace milk in cereal, make sure it doesn’t have added sugar or artificial ingredients.

-Avoid all sugar, since sugar suppresses the immune system.

-Living foods contain thousands of chemical compounds and enzymes the body needs to replace cells and fight disease. Focus on eating as many UNCOOKED fruits and vegetables as possible each day. Fruit smoothies and fresh juice are great. Buying a container of orange juice at the grocery store isn’t the same as fresh squeezed from oranges in a juicer. Enzymes don’t last long. Anything that is alive when you eat it, like an apple, or something that will sprout if it’s a seed is great.

Recommended reading: The China Study. This is my bible, and many of my principles came from here.

Personally, I keep it simple. A dressing without a lot of artificial ingredients or milk, and my favorite vegetables chopped up. Green salads are good. Fruit smoothies and fresh squeezed juice drinks. Don’t get bogged down by making meals with too many ingredients, or things that require a lot of special ingredients. Unless you love cooking, then that’s great. Eat as little processed food as possible. Cut back on frozen food as much as possible.

I recommend eating a lot of fruits in the melon/cantaloup/watermelon group. These have the strongest properties for health.

Generously add first press extra virgin olive oil to your salads every day.

Eat a few grains of bee pollen every day. I throw these in my smoothies. Powerful anti-disease properties. You can find it online or at some of the local healthfood stores.

This is an overview of what I eat. I haven’t been sick once since I started eating this way. Let me know if you have any specific questions.

 

HIV/AIDS flushes out of the system naturally simply from healthy eating?

It makes perfect sense. A toxic American diet weakens the human body, allowing anything and everything to feed on it like a 7-course meal. I can go back to the car model I use to describe cancer. If you put salt in your gas tank along with regular gas, the car will sputter along. Eventually, it will collapse and the engine will be destroyed. The solution isn’t to continually repair the engine. The solution is to put gas into the car without salt. Then the car will run just fine.

 

Bee Pollen – A true “superfood”, cancer and disease annihilator

Some edibles like acai berry juice get way more credit than deserved. I’ve been scanning studies and data on acai, and it simply does NOT live up to any hype. I would give it the same level of “antioxidant power” as a glass of apple or grape juice. And since it’s not locally grown (if you’re an American reader), it’s never really fresh. Simple fresh-squeezed apple juice would be far superior. If I’m looking at studies and I see a lot of “results are inconclusive” or “It seems to help” I disregard it. Which brings me to the real topic at hand – bee pollen.

Bee pollen is basically the crumbs that fall from a bee hive and are collected in a tray. This should not be cooked and should be purchased as locally as possible. I know some vegans and some vegetarians are firmly against eating honey. I never had a problem with this. And NOT consuming their pollen scraps is simply a wasted treasure trove of nutrition.

I found out about bee pollen by complete accident. I was browsing a used book store last week. (Every time I see a book about diet and health, it’s hard to resist buying! It’s a bit of an addiction.) As I was doing a flip through, I saw a chapter on bee pollen. And the information was quite compelling.

Honey bees live a few weeks. But a queen bee can live up to six years. The difference between the two is the queen lives on a diet of royal jelly, made from this miraculous bee pollen. Honey bees eat, well, honey. Talk about a statement for eating a healthy diet.

Some quotes from this book (which I recommend buying) called How To Fight Cancer And Win, by William L. Fisher.

“Professor Dr. Nikolai V. Tsitsin, Russian botanist and biologist, investigated the lifestyle of the centenarians past 125 years of age living in the Caucasus Mountains of upper Russia. He reported that many were beekeepers and that the villagers all ate the sticky residue found on the bottom of the hives as one of their principal foods. On analyzing this mass, Tsitsin found it to be almost pure bee pollen. After intensive research, he determined that including bee pollen in their regular diet was responsible in a large part for the incredible age these people attained. Tsitsin was also impressed with the quality of their lives in that all these people were actively working and in singularly good health in spite of their advanced age.”

125 years old! AMAZING. And they aren’t sitting around in nursing homes either. Imagine adding 45 years to your average lifespan.

-Dr. William Robinson says bee pollen contains an active anticancer element that has the power to slow the development of mammary tumors. “Tumor growth increased in subjects in the control group not given it,” he says.

-Test on rabbits show a 67% reduction in cholesterol, with liver cholesterol reduced by 45%. (I would highly recommend a bee pollen regiment for anyone with a liver condition such as Hepatitis.)

-Prostate health – German/Swiss team says bee pollen keeps men from needing surgery. I’m all for non-invasive prevention.

-British scientist Dr. G.J. Binding - “Bee pollen provides an increased resistance to infection. It is a giant germ killer in whose presence bacteria simply cannot exist.”

That’s a powerful statement.

Olympic and world-class athletes use it as a way to significantly improve performance.

And some online quotes worth mentioning:

A whole bunch of bee pollen kudos here: Bee pollen helps to overcome retardation and other developmental problems in children. Mentally retarded children often respond to doses of bee pollen and glutamic acid.

D.C. Jarvis, M.D. and Charles Mraz, a beekeeper in Vermont, did a study and were unable to find a single case of cancer in beekeepers or learn of one who had died of the disease. They did find one man who had Hodgkin’s disease but he had contracted it before becoming a beekeeper. This man was cured of Hodgkin’s once he started his new occupation.

You read that right. Eat bee pollen, don’t get cancer. Have Hodgkin’s disease, get cured. Would you rather eat bee pollen in a smoothie, or go through chemotherapy and surgery?

In a study at the University of Vienna, twenty-five women with inoperable uterine cancer were treated with chemotherapy. The women who were given pollen with their food exhibited a significantly increased level of immune-system cells and antibody production, as well as a higher concentration of oxygen carrying red blood cells. These women experienced less nausea and hair loss from their chemotherapy. The control group experienced no comparable relief.

Dr. Lee Conway of Denver, Colorado in the USA treats his allergy patients with bee pollen. All his patients who take bee pollen every day remain free from all allergy symptoms. They don’t get new allergies when they move to new places. They stay allergy-free.

If you are curious about whether bee pollen can assist with a specific disease, I recommend Googling. There does seem to be a plethora of information on the topic out there.

 

The enemy of cancer, EVOO (That’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil for those who don’t watch Rachel Ray) – Two tablespoons of olive oil a day will keep the oncologist away

If Rachel Ray doesn’t have her own brand of EVOO yet, she could launch a fairly profitable business. But Rachel tends to use her olive oil in cooking, which destroys many of the healthy components. I will let several quotes direct the content of this entry, but let me summarize. I recommend everyone keep a bottle of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil around, but not for cooking. Add a dash or two to your chopped vegetables and salads. I don’t advise drinking it straight from the bottle! Look for the words “cold pressed” on the bottle, since that means it doesn’t use heat in the extraction of the oil.

The top healthiest brand  of olive oil available to Americans is the Bariani brand. Raymond Francis recommends this for both optimum health and flavor in his book Never Be Sick Again. He says on page 364 “Almost all olive oil is processed and diluted in ways that result in the loss of vitamins, essential fatty acids, antioxidants…In my search for a healthful olive oil, I found only one U.S. producer that’s doing everything right. Not surprisingly, this oil also has the best flavor, the brand is Bariani.”

Bariani olive oil became famous in 1999 after Martha Stewart used it on her show. So here are a few quotes, just in case you’re not convinced.

Olive oil was also a valuable medicine in the hands of ancient Greek doctors. Hippocrates mentions 60 different conditions which could be treated with it, such as skin conditions, wounds and burns, gynaecological ailments, ear infections and many others.

In a study conducted by a group of biochemists from the University of Milan concluded that about 1,000 substances are present in olive oil. The finding may thus indicate that the many benefits of olive oil may not be due from just a few components, but rather from a specific combination. (Pedrotti, 32)

A study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, showed that “women who used olive oil more than once a day, had a 25% lower risk of breast cancer than women who used it less often.”

When buying olive oil you will want to obtain a high quality EXTRA VIRGIN oil. The oil that comes from the first “pressing” of the olive, is extracted without using heat (a cold press) or chemicals, and has no “off” flavors is awarded “extra virgin” status. The less the olive oil is handled, the closer to its natural state, the better the oil. If the olive oil meets all the criteria, it can be designated as “extra virgin”.

A study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health compared the incidence of colon cancer and diet in 28 countries. Colon cancer is the third most common cancer (97,000 new cases annually) and second leading cause of cancer-related deaths (48,000 per year).

Experts discovered that diets high in olive oil were linked to fewer cases of colon cancer than diets high in meat and fish. Scientists suggest that meat and fish increase digestive acid while olive oil reduces or neutralizes the acid buildup from meat and fish.

6/30/03 -  M Solanas from the Department of Cell Biology in Barcelona reported in the International Journal of Oncology that olive oil slowed breast cancer in rats.  A corn oil diet stimulated more cancers than a control diet while olive oil led to fewer and smaller tumors than the control diet. Solanas M – Int J Oncol – 01-Oct-2002; 21(4): 745-53

The other study, jointly conducted by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Girona and the University of Granada, found that certain plant chemicals found in extra-virgin olive oil can fight breast cancer. Extra-virgin olive oil is produced by cold-pressing olives without using chemicals, a process that preserves beneficial compounds which would otherwise be lost.

The study team split olive oil in “fractions”, each containing different plant compounds, and then tested the effects of these “fractions” against breast cancer cells in the lab. And they found that all the fractions inhibited the gene HER2, which promotes breast cancer; compounds in olive oil called “polyphenols” caused cells which had overactive HER2 to undergo apoptosis.

The effects of the olive compounds on breast cancer cells are somewhat similar to that of Herceptin, a well-known cancer drug, which also works on the HER2 gene. Herceptin, however, is said to be only selectively effective on some patients.

Javier Menendez from the Catalan Institute of Oncology and Antonio Segura-Carretero from the University of Granada in Spain led a team of researchers who set out to investigate which parts of olive oil were most active against cancer.

Menendez said, “Our findings reveal for the first time that all the major complex phenols present in extra-virgin olive oil drastically suppress overexpression of the cancer gene HER2 in human breast cancer cells”.

 

Walmart starts really lame PR campaign to leverage the image away from being “perceived” as a destructive garbage monster

“Customers want products that are more efficient, that last longer and perform better,” Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke said in a statement. “And increasingly they want information about the entire life cycle of a product so they can feel good about buying it. . . . We do not see this as a trend that will fade.”

If it doesn’t come in packaging that ends up in a landfill, Walmart doesn’t sell it. I guess theoretically, you could take your own re-usable shopping bags and buy produce without packaging.

And what about the aisles of toxic chemicals (Clorox, Tide, Windex, etc.) that make our lives a little easier , that end up back in our water and air supply after we’re done? And the 15 aisles of processed, artificially preserved packaged toxic “food” that will directly feed diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer and a thousand other ailments?

We know you’re doing us all a favor with your everyday low prices. It allows us to get more products, to fill more of your Glad trash bags, to fill out landfills. And we’re also glad that half your products are made in China using cheap foreign labor. We love the fact manufacturing pollutants are being disposed of in far off countries instead of our own American soil!

We love how you provide us scooters to get around your store. After we become morbidly obese from eating all your processed food, it’s a much-appreciated convenience!

 

The Stunning Health Benefits of Coconut Oil

I was at my local bookstore today. I always make sure to stop at the clearance racks for good, cheap books. A book about the health benefits of coconut oil caught my eye. I started skimming through the book and noticed people who took coconut oil were able to treat, halt, slow down or destroy a laundry list of diseases. The list included cancer, diabetes, HIV, hepatitis and many more. I remember reading a clip in the book about pharmaceutical companies ignoring coconut oil because 1. you can’t charge people a lot of money and turn a profit on something so simple and commonly available and 2. you can’t make any money if you cure a disease (you make more money by offering “pill subscription plans” every month).

This is an important topic to a raw vegan because the same types of healthy fats in coconut oil are also found in a standard raw vegan diet. When you buy coconut oil, it must NOT be hydrogenated. This is when the oil has been chemically changed by industrial processes. Hydrogenated oil contains trans fatty acids. “Hydrogenated oil” will help encourage everything from cancer tumor growths to heart attacks.

I’m pulling out quotes of special notation from an article I found on coconut oil. There is literally so much information on the topic it would be easier to pick out a disease or ailment, then Google “coconut oil + diabetes”. These quotes are from one article.

If you want to buy some coconut oil, I recommend time-tested Tropical Traditions Gold Label Standard Virgin Coconut Oil.

(I call “population studies” healthy hotspots)
Population Studies
“There are quite a few studies that have been done on traditional diets in tropical areas that are high in coconut oil consumption. These studies back up the fact that Marianita’s experience growing up in the Philippines is common in cultures that derive much of their caloric intake from the saturated fats of coconut oil. In a study published in 1981, the populations of two South Pacific islands (Pukapuka and Tokelau) were examined over a period of time starting in the 1960s, before western foods were prevalent in the diets of either culture. The study was designed to investigate the relative effects of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol in determining serum cholesterol levels. Coconuts were practically a staple in the diets, with up to 60% of their caloric intake coming from the saturated fat of coconut oil. The study found very lean and healthy people who were relatively free from the modern diseases of western cultures, including obesity. Their conclusion: “Vascular disease is uncommon in both populations and there is no evidence of the high saturated fat intake having a harmful effect in these populations.”
Studies conducted by Dr. Weston Price
“Other studies done among the Pacific islands were conducted back in the 1930s by Dr. Weston Price, a dentist. Dr. Price spent significant time traveling and examining traditional cultures, their diet, and dental and overall health, as compared to those eating more modern diets consisting of refined foods. His work is documented in the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939 Keats Publishing). As he traveled to islands throughout the South Pacific, he found the same thing wherever he went. Those eating a traditional diet consisting of high concentrations of coconut were in very good health, and were not obese even though they had such a high fat content in their diet. Those who through commercial trade with western countries were starting to eat more refined foods high in carbohydrates were starting to suffer common western diseases, including dental decay.”

Study in India
“In India a study was done comparing traditional cooking oils, like coconut oil and ghee which are rich in saturated fats, with modern oils like sunflower or safflower oils which are mostly polyunsaturated, in relation to prevalence of heart disease and Type-II diabetes. The study was done by the Department of Medicine, at Safdarjang Hospital in New Delhi. The study was titled “Choice of cooking oils–myths and realities”, and was published in the Journal of the Indian Medical Association in 1998. They found that while saturated fats were portrayed as unhealthy in favor of newer polyunsaturated vegetable oils, that heart disease and diabetes had actually increased after consumption of the traditional oils like coconut oil and ghee decreased.2 Weight gain typically is associated with heart disease and diabetes. They concluded that these newer “heart-friendly” oils like sunflower or safflower oils possess an undesirable Omega 6 fatty acid ratio to Omega 3 fatty acids,  and that there are numerous research data now available to indicate that the sole use or excess intake of these newer vegetable oils are actually detrimental to the health of Indians.”

Coconut Oil destroys HIV, measles, herpes, the flu, and more
“When lauric acid is consumed in the diet, either in human breast milk or in coconut oil, lauric acid forms a monoglyceride called monolaurin, which has been shown to destroy several bacteria and viruses, including listeria monocytogenes and helicobacter pylori, and protozoa such as giardia lamblia.  Some of the viruses that have been destroyed by monolaurin include HIV, measles, herpes simplex virus-1, vesicular stomatitis virus, influenza and cytomegalovirus.6 There is also evidence now that the MCTs in coconut oil kill yeast infections, such as Candida.”

The term “fat” in this quote below is used to define a healthy average body weight. As most other kids in the Philippines would have been underweight. The converse would be, American kids who are NOT fat because they’re eating healthy fats. So obesity decreases when coconut oil is consumed, if you’re overweight to begin with. In other words, consuming coconut oil balances your body towards its ideal weight.
“…they ate fresh coconut for breakfast instead of rice and fish, and munched it whenever they were hungry, picking it up from the copra being laid out to dry. These kids ended up being the healthiest in the neighborhood, fat, with smooth, shiny skin and good teeth! As teenagers, they never had skin eruptions. Luanne, Mindanao, Philippines”

“When people did go to town to visit the local government doctor, it was usually not for the kind of ailments that westerners go to the doctor today, such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, thyroid problems, etc. These illnesses were virtually unknown in my younger days. People went to see the doctor to treat wounds, or from sicknesses common in the tropics, such as malaria, diarrhea, dengue, etc. My father was well into his 60s before he made his first visit to the doctor, and that was for a head wound. He died in the late 1980s in a car accident in the U.S. He was in his 70s and in perfect health. Two of his older sisters still survive him to this day and are in great health. One is in her 90s. One of his sisters, my aunt, was in her late 80s and still lived in the remote area of the Philippines where I grew up, eating a traditional diet, when my family moved back to the Philippines in 1998. She taught us how her generation made coconut oil by hand, which is the basis for the Tropical Traditions Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil, the most popular Virgin Coconut Oil sold in the U.S. Her first visit to a doctor was when she was in her early 80s. I myself have no memory of being sick growing up. I suffered my first “cold” when I was in my 30s, after I married my American husband and spent a year in the U.S. eating typical U.S. food found in grocery stores.”