If you want to follow the Mary Enig and Sally Fallon way of eating(Weston Price) you need to buy the book Nourishing Traditions
Scones.
Forgiver me if I give the recipe in old fashioned pounds and ounces, but it as given to me by my grandmother,a wonderful lady.She saw Queen Victoria and actually met Dr Barnado, when she was a teenager and he visited her home
1 pound of plain flour.(I use spelt flour or wholemeal)
4 ounes fat(coconut oil or butter)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
Buttermilk or plain yogurt about.14 tablespoons of buttermilk but about 1 pint of yogurt
Method
Add the bicarb and cram of tartar and mix into the flour
Rub in the fat to the flour until it looks like fine bread crumbs
Stir in the buttermilk until you have a wetish dough
Flour your hands and a suitable clean surface
Form the dough into a ball and place on the floured surface.
Flatten this ball with your hands until it is it is about as high as a the height of index finger from end to first knuckle Better too fat than too thin,it is not a biscuit.(Do not roll it with a rolling pin as a scone rolled is a scone spoiled.)
Cut into circles( using the end of a glass.tumbler)
Place on a baking tray and wipe over the top with buttermilk or yogurt( this is just for appearance)
Cook at 210 degrees C for 12 to 15 minutes.
Cut in half and eat with butter or cream and jam.

Oh Man!!!! Yummy, I love scones also.

As to the coconut oil use,
I have found an easy way for myself to combine a lot of coconut oil and cinnamon.
Either on a hot baked sweet potato or toast- just spread with lots (a T.) of oil and when it is melted pour on a cinnamon and sugar mix. If you don't want to eat sugar you can always substitute stevia or honey.
It is such a comfort food and delicious.

I was brought up with coconut and coconut oil as an integral part of my diet, in a place and time that fertilizers and chemicals were not used. I have a fair trust that coconut is a good food, and a useful part of a balanced diet, as many people live long and productive lives, and as it is a tropical place, they are mobile and flexible longer than many people in the western world.

However there is a lot to say that people in communities where it is high on the menu are more prone to strokes and heart disease, and that this is something that has come with affluence, and the over use in comparison with when people ate more frugally.

I was reminded of this by another PwP, and had to think about it as my own grandmother had PD and was also someone who ate coconut on a daily basis for her entire life - AND there are many people living in countries where it is an integral part of the diet, and still there is PD, for the most part undiagnosed.....

So while I think it is probably better than many of the denatured or downright damaging fats that are used in pre-prepared foods in industrialized countries, and that it can also have health benefits, I would say use it in moderation, not to excess.

In the past I have been very much in favour of it's use, as I know people who have used it to great effect on children with autism, who actually have some symptoms that are uncannily like PD - but as part of a special diet that contains NO other fats, no sugars, no chocolate, no carbs, no pulses - in effect it becomes a substitute for ALL the other dietary fats..........

I feel that people can overdo things sometimes in their rush to find something, anything, that will improve them. Cinnamon, coconut oil, turmeric etc, are in a way exotic to people who would not normally include them regularly in their diet, and do not understand how carefully a person who cooks for a family in the traditional way would balance spices, and various foods, in tune with weather, the seasons, the individual persons makeup, and their state of health, their age .........

Four teaspoons of coconut oil per day seems excessive to me, if you gently melt a little down, a small amount goes a long way, and that is how it would be used, sparingly, in a holistic traditional diet....... when these traditions started to go, and the frugal ways of preparing food started to get diluted or lost, then all the diseases of our modern times started to emerge, just as they have in Europe, America, and elsewhere......

owns up to dashing around like a headless chicken

Lindy,

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I actually just wrote the Nurse who posts on Nutrition at the NPF forum on this. My concern is that 4 1/2 tablespoons is okay for a healthy person but too much when one has inflammation of the brain. So my plan was to only use 2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons max or I might just stop with 2 to be cautious. You are right- there may be some evidence it helps with AD or Autism but know that a PD brain is the same thing. In fact, high doses could do more harm than good.

My plan was to follow the Enig diet on a modified basis by not taking as much coconut oil. BTW, Enig is a nutritionist. She also supports other fats like butter, whole raw milk, whole fat yogurt. Her point is that we need to return to more traditional diets and that the introduction of synthetically produced unsaturated vegetable oils are the beginnings of heart disease in the modern world.

I actually though that heart disease in other more traditional cultures was due to the introduction of fast food. This is the case with American Samoa. I thought that other traditional cultures that had the coconut as the mainstay of their diets like in Hawaii and other Polynesian groups also experienced the same. That's what the studies show at least.

Laura

There are also studies that show that inflammation is the trigger of heart disease and that high cholesterol is a biomarker for longevity!
I'm looking into raw butter-seems a person could purchase and freeze it.

Another way to utilize better dietary fat is to blend flax oil with butter 1/1 and store in stone crock in fridge - spreads easy on warm toast!

am enjoying this thread

md

Laura, in many of these societies the majority of people still eat traditionally, but they eat more, and in a less balanced way. The rises are not just seen in affluent people who eat westernized diets..... there are many millions who simply cannot afford these things, and for whom a slice of pizza or a burger would be an incredibly rare treat...... I thought like you till I looked a bit closer....

It is not necessarily coconut oil that we should focus on. A component of that oil is a group of specific oils called "medium chain triglycerides". Popular with athletes, they are readily available at your local health food store. Wikipedia has this to say:

-

Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are high -chain (6 to 12 carbons) fatty acid esters of glycerol.

MCTs passively diffuse from the GI tract to the portal system (longer fatty acids are absorbed into the lymphatic system) without requirement for modification
like long-chain fatty acids or very-long-chain fatty acids.
<Comment: It is interesting that our bodies immediately separate the two.>

In addition, MCTs do not require bile salts for digestion. Patients that have malnutrition or malabsorption syndromes are treated with MCTs because they do not require energy for absorption, utilization, or storage.
<Sounds as though they are a "special" nutrient which may explain my first comment above.>

Coconut oil is composed of approximately 66% medium-chain triglycerides.
<It will be interesting to see if the 66% are the "good guys">

Other rich sources of MCTs include palm kernel oils and camphor tree drupes. The fatty acids found in MCTs are called medium-chain fatty acids. The names of the medium-chain fatty acids (and the corresponding number of carbons) found in MCTs are caproic acid (C6), caprylic acid (C8), capric acid (C10) and lauric acid (C12). MCTs are composed of a glycerol backbone and three of these fatty acids....

...

The milk fats of humans, dogs, and guinea pigs are largely made up of long-chain fatty acids. The milk fats of cows, sheep, and goats are rich in short-chain fatty acids. The milk fats of horses contain large amounts of medium-chain fatty acids.[2]
<We start out with human milk fat, of course, but as adults in an agricultural culture we tend toward the second group. However, a lot of us had ancestors who were horse-based nomads drinking horse milk and wandering the great plains of Asia. Their descendants are Caucasians as in the mountain range along the border of those plains. They are also the group who have the highest rates of PD today. Hmmm?"

-----------

And finally-


1. Brain Res. 2008 Aug 21;1226:209-17. Epub 2008 Jun 11.

Induction of ketosis may improve mitochondrial function and decrease steady-state
amyloid-beta precursor protein (APP) levels in the aged dog.

Studzinski CM, MacKay WA, Beckett TL, Henderson ST, Murphy MP, Sullivan PG,
Burnham WM.

Department of Pharmacology, University of Toronto, Canada.

Region specific declines in the cerebral glucose metabolism are an early and
progressive feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Such declines occur
pre-symptomatically and offer a potential point of intervention in developing AD
therapeutics. Medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are rapidly converted to
ketone bodies, were tested for their ability to provide an alternate energy
source to neurons suffering from compromised glucose metabolism. The present
study determined the short-term effects of ketosis in aged dogs, a natural model
of amyloidosis. The animals were administered a 2 g/kg/day dose of MCTs for 2
months. Mitochondrial function and oxidative damage assays were then conducted on
the frontal and parietal lobes. Amyloid-beta (Abeta), amyloid precursor protein
(APP) processing and beta-site APP cleaving enzyme (BACE1) assays were conducted
on the frontal, parietal and occipital lobes. Aged dogs receiving MCTs, as
compared to age-matched controls, showed dramatically improved mitochondrial
function, as evidenced by increased active respiration rates. This effect was
most prominent in the parietal lobe. The improved mitochondrial function may have
been due to a decrease in oxidative damage, which was limited to the
mitochondrial fraction. Steady-state APP levels were also decreased in the
parietal lobe after short-term MCT administration. Finally, there was a trend
towards a decrease in total Abeta levels in the parietal lobe. BACE1 levels
remained unchanged. Combined, these findings suggest that short-term MCT
administration improves energy metabolism and decreases APP levels in the aged
dog brain.


PMID: 18582445 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


........

HUMAN MILK............those two words hit me like a ton of bricks! Here is the reason why: how many PWP like me were not "Breast-fed" at all as a baby? My mother told me that a nurse came into her hospital room shortly after I was born and asked if she would be returning back to work and she said yes. The nurse promptly left the room and returned with a shot to dry up the milk without me ever having the God-given benefit of all the FATS and other nutrients!!! Is this a "EUREKA" moment? Don't know but it would behove us to start asking how many PWP were or were not breast-fed, would it not?

I was just wondering that myself! My story is the same as yours, but my mom ended up being home for awhile.

This is from a Cochrane Report:

Infant formula is composed of fat in the form of LCT or MCT in varying percentages. The range is from less than 10% of fat as MCT (greater than 90% of fat as LCT) to over 80% of fat as MCT (less than 20% of fat as LCT).