Food is the fashion, and like fashion what was ‘in’ in May could be ‘out’ by June…so what to do? Well, it’s not so tough when you consider that eating for health usually involves minimal processing, and eating great tasting food involves finding and using the best quality ingredients. We all know in our heart of hearts that refined sugars, trans-fats and many cooking methods find us on a slow path to suicide. We know that the quick snack we buy at the petrol station gives us an ever too brief high and then a month on the cross trainer to move the lard. It’s just not worth the rushed gobble.
‘The Healthy Coconut’ by Jenni Maddison plants the seed of using (for us) non-traditional ingredients in new ways. Visit your health food store or supermarket health food section ten years ago, and you may have found a congealed packet of lecithin and a dusty bottle of vitamins. Apart from the ‘Berocca’, what did you ever buy? These days the health food section is a mini supermarket in itself, and you may have to time it just right to grab the last pack of chia seeds.
Maddison’s book explains all about the health benefits of the coconut and its applications, and includes a good variety of recipes for food and for beauty. Some of the recipes list many ingredients, which should please the gourmand, while others are very simple and delicious blends of items you probably have in your cupboard – plus coconut of course.
The photography in ‘The Healthy Coconut’ depicts food in a way that encourages the salivary glands, and the health care products look beautifully creamy and unadulterated. Recipes are written in a straightforward manner, and seem as though they’d be easy to follow, though the proof is in the pudding.
The only down side to this book is that it, in part, advertises and promotes use of ‘Coconut Magic’ products. We know that some more unscrupulous companies and organisations have used such books to convince us that their ‘fried cream croissants with chocolate and extra fat’ are good for us and that we will perish if we don’t buy their brand of ‘high fat cream with extra fatty cream’ to make them. If you do think that coconut in all its guises, and the use of coconut in your food and beauty products will provide you with health benefits, then this book is for you. If you love the taste of food made with these fresh and ‘clean’ ingredients then this book is doubly for you. It certainly seems worth a try whichever wavelength you find yourself on.
