The coconut comes full circle: The tree of life rediscovered

(Part 1 of 3)

The coconut is one of the most robust and useful plants in the plant kingdom. It is ubiquitous throughout the tropics and is the plant that has made small islands habitable.

The nut directly provides a nutritious high-calorie food and drink. Numerous traditional products can be obtained, such as a unique vegetable oil, wine and vinegar, a strong fiber that can be made into ropes and mats, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal or used as a water filter.

The rich history of the coconut

The coconut has a rich history of use wherever it is found. In the coastal areas of India, the coconut tree is known as kalpa vriksha, which is Sanskrit for the “tree which gives all that is necessary for living.” The Singhalese (Sri Lanka) have a proverb that states that the coconut serves already 99 different purposes, and that the hundredth will be found. In the Philippines, the coconut is known as the “tree of life.” Today, the coconut is grown in about 90 countries all over the tropical world.

We can glimpse the importance of the coconut in the lives of the early Filipinos from the multi-volume series of “The Philippine Islands” by Blair and Robertson, which is a translation of letters and reports by Spanish chroniclers. In these historical accounts, the coconut was referred to either as the cocoa-palm or cocoanut.

A certain Captain Artieda wrote in 1564 that: “The cocoa-palm offers the greatest means of sustenance to the natives,” while another early chronicler observed that: “The cocoanuts furnish a nutritious food when rice is scarce.” A Spanish priest named Fray Pedro de Alfaro marveled that the coconut tree was “a remarkable and exceedingly useful tree.”

The Spanish made numerous references to the usefulness of coconut oil, such as this entry written around 1650: “Good oil is also extracted from this nut; and from the residue of that process the natives and creoles make a very savory dish with rice.” 

During the mid-17th century, the Spanish colonial government issued ordinances to compel the people to replace old coconut trees and to expand the areas planted to the coconut because it provided a good food source for the people when the harvest failed. In addition, the fiber was found to be useful for making rigging for the galleons.

Copra and coconut oil

During the 19th century, the economic importance of coconut oil and copra grew with the increase in trade with the Dutch and the British. During the early American period, copra and coconut oil became major exports of the Philippines to the US. By 1913, the annual exports of copra from the Philippines accounted for one-third of the world’s total. Because of the economic importance of coconut oil, the American scientists working at the Bureau of Science of the Philippine colonial government conducted numerous scientific investigations on it from the early 1900’s to 1920’s. For example, in the first volume of the Philippine Journal of Science which was established in 1906, there were five papers written on the coconut alone.

Coconut oil was valued for its use in the food industry. An important characteristic of coconut oil was its ability to resist oxidation and rancidity. This stability is due to its high percentage of saturated fats — in particular lauric acid.

The US soybean oil industry

Despite its usefulness — or perhaps because of it — the coconut became one of the victims of the rise of American industry of the early 20th century. In the 1920s, Henry Ford led an effort to link the products of American agriculture to industry. This occurred around the time that the American Soybean Association was established to promote the development of the soybean agroindustry. Henry Ford supported the development of plastics from agricultural materials, in particular soybean oil. Soybean oil is an ideal raw material for plastics because of its high polyunsaturation which makes it reactive with oxygen. In fact, this is the same chemical characteristic that makes soybean oil an unhealthy oil!

Because soybean oil is an unstable oil, it was hydrogenated to produce a solid fat for use as margarine and in numerous other food products. Unfortunately, hydrogenation also formed unnatural trans-fats, which has been shown to cause various metabolic irregularities.

Various legal restrictions imposed by the US Congress during the 1930s further limited the export of coconut oil to the US in order to protect its domestic industry. The outbreak of World War II in 1941 cut the export of coconut oil from the Philippines to the US, and the trade relationship changed completely after the war.

(To be continued)

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Dr. Fabian M. Dayrit is an Academician of the National Academy of Science and Technology and member of the Philippine-American Academy of Science and Engineering. He holds a PhD Chemistry degree from Princeton University. He is the Dean of the School of Science and Engineering, Ateneo de Manila University, and chairman of the Conrado S. Dayrit Foundation, which is committed to the promotion of the coconut.