Coconut oil is one of Mother Nature’s best inventions. It’s safe to say that from the kitchen to the bedroom–and every room in between–there’s about a million uses for coconut oil.

Whether your interest is culinary, personal care, or home cleaning related, the benefits and uses for coconut oil are many.

Don’t believe me? Read on for this impressive list. While this list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, it does detail some of the simplest and most common uses for coconut oil.

Everyday Uses for Coconut Oil

1. Makeup Remover – Use coconut oil as a makeup remover. I use it to remove even the most stubborn eye makeup. Just dip a cotton ball or wipe in the oil and use smooth sweeps to remove the makeup.
2. Frying and Roasting – Because of its high smoke point, coconut oil is perfect for frying and roasting. I use it to make just perfect tostones, which are twice fried plantains.
3. Smoothie Fat – Coconut oil can be added to protein smoothies to add some satisfying and heavy fat.
4. Hair Conditioner – A weekly conditioning with coconut oil will make your locks stronger, healthier, and softer.
5. Body Lotion – In the dead of winter, there’s nothing better for healing dry skin than a good slathering of coconut oil. Coconut oil is good for helping to heal chapped skin, eczema, hives, and other skin conditions. It is moisturizing, anti-inflammatory, and very soothing.
6. Lube – While it’s not ideal for use with condoms (increases the risk of breakage), coconut oil makes a fine personal lubricant. It’s free from parabens, petroleum, glycerin, and other yucky stuff. Plus, it has the bonus of being a natural anti-fungal.
7. Shave Cream – I’m not ideal for face shaving, but coconut oil works great as an alternative for shaving cream on the legs.
8. Coconut Coffee – Some people are even adding coconut oil to their coffee.
9. Lip Balm – To soothe dry, chapped lips, use coconut oil to make your own natural lip balm.
10. Hair Defrizzer – After a blow-dry, I rub a small bit of coconut oil into my ends and to help smooth flyaways. It works like a charm and smells great too.
11. Leather Polish – While you may not need to polish your leather shoes or bag every day, coconut oil can be used to bring life back to dry leather in need of a shine.
12. Wood Polish – It also makes a great wood polish for adding moisture back into wood furniture. Try it first on a corner, though.
13. Swap it for Butter – Use coconut oil in place of butter for a healthier fat and to impart flavor. It’s equally great in brownies, on top of a baked sweet potato, or in place of butter on toast.
14. Fight Flub Rub – Coconut oil can be useful to prevent chafing–especially between thighs.
15. Diaper Cream – Equally it’s also a nice alternative to diaper creams to protect baby’s bottom from moisture.

Related on EcoSalon

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5 Practical Coconut Oil Uses for Your Body

Is Coconut Oil Good for Your Skin or Just a Pain in Your Pores?

Image: Jar of Coconut Oil via Shutterstock

The post 15 Excellent Everyday Uses for Coconut Oil appeared first on EcoSalon.

Easy substitutions for a plant-based lifestyle. 

One of the nasty pitfalls of becoming vegan or pursuing a more plant-based, healthy lifestyle is the allure of vegan or low-calorie products. These packaged goods mock the “real” thing with often not so forgiving preservatives, colorants, and other additives. That’s why one of the biggest challenges is finding simple, within-hands-reach ways to replace the most common ingredients with their vegan or healthy (and just-as-real) counterparts.

Brighten your kitchen, nourish your heart, and spread the love with these animal-friendly and nutritional kitchen substitutions.

Eggs

If you aren’t eating an egg-centric dish, chances are that a recipe calling for eggs is looking for either a binding or leavening agent. Eggs are viscous and hold ingredients tightly together, which is why they appear in most baked goods, burgers, and creams. They also help to leaven, or “rise” baked dishes. Depending on what you’re making, the replacement will change accordingly.

To replace one egg in a baked recipe, alternatives that have worked for me in include:

• 1 tablespoon a of ground flaxseed mixed in 3 tablespoons of water and allowed to sit until the mixture thickens
• 2 tablespoons of cornstarch or potato starch
• 1/2 large banana, mashed, but only for sweet recipes
• 1/4 cup applesauce, but only for sweet recipes

Keep in mind that the replacement should adjust according to the recipe. The flaxseed mixture wouldn’t work in a smooth batter, so opt for another alternative. If the recipe calls for more than two eggs, add some baking powder – 1/2 teaspoon per additional egg – as it will help with the rising effect.

For the pure purpose of binding ingredients in a mixture, the options are wide and varied. Instead of one egg, you could use 1/2 avocado, 2 tablespoons tahini, 2 tablespoons nut butter, 2 tablespoons bread crumbs, or 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast. Anything viscous and thick enough to hold things together without changing the taste will work. The dry replacements work best in mixtures with a liquid element.

Milk

This is probably the easiest of the bunch, because there is a hot market for dairy-free “milk” these days. Peruse the health section aisles at your grocery store and choose from the array of rice, almond, hemp, coconut, and soy milks. Avoid brands with too many additives – sugars, flavoring or preservatives.

Whenever I have the ingredients on hand, I like to make my own almond milk. All you need is 1 cup raw almonds, enough water to soak them in overnight, 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, and 3 cups water. Soak the almonds in the salt and water overnight. The next day, rinse them and toss into a blender. Blend them with 3 cups of water until thin. Separate the almond milk from its fibers with a cheese cloth. Drink immediately and store in the refrigerator.

Cheese

Dairy cheese can be replaced by any store-bought soy or rice-based cheese, but these often include strange ingredients that are necessary to achieve the same texture, taste, and look of cheese. They are also not much more forgiving in terms of calories and fat.

Luckily, these vegan alternatives make things a bit more interesting and are easy enough to make on the regular:

• white cheese dip
• sweet potato cheese
• basil cashew cheese

Keep in mind that when it comes to cheese, nutritional yeast is your most trusted accomplice. It has a cheesy flavor that, when paired with a creamy base, can mock cheese to the T (or C).

Gelatin

Ever wonder where gelatin comes from? It’s a protein obtained by boiling animal bones, tendons, ligaments, hooves, and skin. Not necessarily the kinds of things you associate with jellied candies, toaster pastries, cereals, and Jell-O.

Alternatives include carrageenan, agar-agar, fruit pectin, and locust bean gum.

Butter

In sweet recipes, you can replace up to 3/4 cup butter with applesauce. Replace the rest with a vegan butter substitution, such as Earth Balance. In cooking, where butter is scant, use a vegan substitution.

Oil

Oil has little benefit when it is cooked, literally, to death. Oil biochemically changes when it is heated, and it loses many of its nutritional benefits. Opt to enjoy oils in their raw, extra-virgin states. The healthiest raw oils include olive oil, grapeseed oil, avocado oil, walnut oil, sesame oil, flaxseed oil, and peanut oil. When cooking, use coconut oil – it has a high burning temperature and can withstand heat.

Buttermilk

To replace buttermilk, simply combine 1 tablespoon of white vinegar with 1 cup of vegan milk, such as almond, soy, coconut or rice milk.

Sugar

In baked goods, marinades, and sauces, maple syrup is a great replacement for sugar. In fact, I find that it gives the dish a deeper, more complex flavor, making it more unique and enjoyable to eat. You can replace every 1 cup of sugar with 3/4 cup of maple syrup. This requires that you reduce the dominant liquid in the recipe by 2-4 tablespoons, for consistency’s sake. Pick and choose with the liquids – you don’t want to sacrifice an important taste, so don’t reduce the oil or vinegar measurements when you have 2 or 3 cups of milk to take from. To offset maple syrup’s slight acidity, you may choose to add 1/4-1/2 teaspoons of baking soda. If the recipe calls for sour cream, buttermilk, or sour milk, skip the baking soda.

In tea and coffee, there is no need to reach for sugar anymore. Stevia is the only sweetener out there that has a zero-glycemic level and zero calories – to say nothing of its a-little-goes-a-long-way poster child status. Stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar and if you find a brand that fits your tastes – I am a NuNaturals fan – you won’t be able to leave the house without it! I prefer liquid stevia, because it’s seamless to use and easy to carry around in my purse. A few drops later, and my beverages taste like liquid gold. One 2-ounce bottle tends to last me 3-4 months.

Some manufacturers have come out with powdered versions that can replace sugar in recipes. There are also sugar and powdered stevia mixes that aim to reduce sugar, but not completely nix it.

ALSO CHECK OUT: 

Vegan Chocolate Mousse with Sea Salt

Make Your Own Vegan Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Recipe: Vegan Avocado Alfredo Sauce

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

Images: Furry Scaly, Robert S. Donovan, Tétine, Jeffrey W, MRBECK, Aylin Erman

The post 8 Substitutions for the Most Common Kitchen Ingredients appeared first on EcoSalon.

Big Macs aren’t good for you. You’d think the world would know this by now, but more often than not we witness McDonalds drive-thru traffic jams that our own friends and family are in. It’s one thing to hear, to know better, to understand; and it’s another thing to internalize, accept, and react accordingly. So let me say this again: Big Macs aren’t good for you and here are some reasons why.

An Icon is Born

In 1967, McDonald’s franchisee Jim Delligatti began to serve double-decker cheeseburgers on a double-cut bun in an effort to find a way to structure the messiness caused by the company’s token “special sauce.” Expanding from its humble beginnings in Uniontown, PA to locations across the nation as soon as the next year, the new burger was labeled the “Big Attraction” with its two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions and sesame-seed bun. Today, the Big Mac has come to be a symbol of everything stereotypically American – capitalism, commercialism, and gluttony.

The original sales price of the iconic Big Mac was 45 cents, compared to the current $3.00, and today McDonald’s sells as many as 550 million Big Macs per year in the U.S., with a scope of some 120 countries.

The Fat Facts

Let’s talk about the one of the Big Mac’s biggest offenses: fat. A Big Mac is by no means a stranger to it. Each serving packs 550 calories, 260 calories of which come from fat. That’s nearly half of the entire burger’s calories and 45 percent of your daily balance! And of this whopping 29 grams of fat, 10 grams are saturated and 1.5 grams are trans. A Big Mac also contains 75 mg cholesterol, which is 25 percent of your daily allowance. And similarly alarming is the Big Mac’s sodium content. Each serving contains 1,070 milligrams.

Now, if you’ve done some of your own research, don’t be fooled by the Big Mac’s apparent virtuous side. According to the nutritional profile made available by McDonalds itself, each serving contains 3 grams of dietary fiber, 25 grams of protein and offers 6, 2, and 25 percent of our daily vitamin A, C and calcium requirements. Sounds positive, right?

It is important to keep in mind that not all nutrients are the same across the board, and this supposed uplifting aspect to the Big Mac is shadowed by its downsides as well as the quality of its ingredients. For example, the protein you get from animal products differs substantially from the protein you receive from plants, in terms of quality, assimilation, and overall health benefits. The fiber, protein and vitamins in a Big Mac are frankly not that compelling.

If You Can’t Pronounce It, Don’t Eat It

Given the stats, it doesn’t take a wild guess to know the Big Mac is compromising big time in the ingredients department.

Among the many ingredients that make up the Big Mac bun, for example, are high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, calcium silicate, wheat gluten, emulsifier (mono- and diglycerides, diacetyl tartaric acid esters of fatty acids, ethanol, sorbitol, polysorbate 20, potassium propionate), sodium stearoyl lactylate, dough conditioner (corn starch, ammonium chloride, ammonium sulfate, calcium peroxide, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes), and calcium propionate (preservative).

That’s a mouthful.

Aside from the fact that most of those are nearly impossible to pronounce at first go, many of these ingredients are dangerous. Azodicarbonamide is even banned in some countries around the world because it is a respiratory sensitizer and may harm people with asthma or those prone to allergies – to say nothing of the obvious culprits in the list, such as high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils.

The “special sauce” is indeed special – for its creepy add-ins, that is. The sauce includes high fructose corn syrup, sugar, the preservatives propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate, and hydrolyzed (corn gluten and wheat) proteins.

And if you knew what any of that actually meant, you’d realize “hydrolyzed proteins” is just a fancy way of spelling out monosodium glutamate, or the infamous MSG. The flavor enhancer, MSG, has been picking up a lot of heat these days, because it is reported to cause headaches, flushing, sweating, numbness, a rapid heart beat, chest pain, nausea, and weakness, among other things. The sauce also contains the fertility-damaging polysorbate 80 and its preservatives are known to inhibit nutrient absorption – if, of course, there were any particularly beneficial nutrients to speak of in the Big Mac to begin with.

Best of the Worst

On a positive note, the only time you should eat a Big Mac is by association. A Whopper contains 760 calories and 47 grams of fat, a Wendy’s quarter-pound single with cheese has 500 calories and 26 grams of fat, a Hardee’s Thickburger comprises 910 calories and 64 grams of fat, a Sonic Cheeseburger with mayo packs 700 calories and 42 grams of fat, and a 10-sack of White Castle sliders has 1,700 calories and 90 grams of fat. But that’s the only health list a Big Mac will top.

So, instead of rolling through the drive-thru, consider making a homemade, “real” version of a burger.

Vegan Chickpea Burger

Serves 5

Ingredients:

• 1 can chickpeas, mashed
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large white onion
• 2 hot peppers (or 1 jalapeno)
• 2 scallions
• 2 garlic gloves
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1.5 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander
• 3 tbsp ground oats
• Buns, avocado, tomato, red onion, and lettuce for garnish

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

Image: Leo Almighty

The post The Breakdown: Looking at the Nutrional Value of a Big Mac appeared first on EcoSalon.