Coconut oil verses Honey

July 25, 2011

As a reward for participating in the Samoa Challenge, I am giving out 500 ml bottles of Extra Virgin Coconut Oil or Samoan Honey, both items promoted and sold by my sponsoring organization, Women in Business Development (WIBD). For curiosity I decided to do a little test.

One test was to determine if Samoans had a preference for cooking oils. I set up 500 ml bottles of palm oil, sunflower oil, soya oil and WIBD’s coconut oil in the WIBD office and asked how they would use the oils. Sunflower and soya oils were ruled out immediately. Hardly anyone had ever heard of these oils. The choice was clear. Palm oil was used for cooking while coconut oil was used for massages and hair oil. Hardly anyone associated coconut oil with cooking even though their employer WIBD was promoting it as the “Healthiest Oil on Earth”! I was in trouble.

I set aside a bottle of coconut oil of the same size bottle of honey, and then asked which they would choose. Almost everyone chose honey. I asked why? “Because you can eat it!” was the reply.

Lastly, I asked if they got the bottle of coconut oil instead of the honey what would they do with it. Most said they would put it into smaller bottles and sell it. They could never use 500 ml of coconut oil in a number of years. Coconut oil sold in the market was vastly more expensive than honey or any other type of oil.

Coconut oil was made by native Samoans and used for cooking before the cheap palm oil and money from overseas changed both the production of coconut oil and even the recognition of its use as cooking oil. I have used coconut oil for cooking and it is the best, if not the healthiest.

Now I have five hundred 500 ml in my house to distribute. That is one Hell-of-a-Massage!