About Tropical Traditions and The Coconut Diet^TM

Tropical Traditions and was started through the efforts of Brian and Marianita Shilhavy.

Marianita’s Story

I grew up in the Philippines during the 1960s and 1970s. My family lived in a small rural community of about 100 families. We lived on the side of a mountain, and everybody in our community earned their living from agriculture, primarily coconuts.

My father was a farmer, and his main crop was coconuts. He had some rice plantations and grew some other crops, and he was also the principal of our local government elementary school. But his main source of income in the 1960s and early 1970s was from coconuts. He made more money from the sale of his coconuts than he did as a school principal, for example. In the Philippines, the government provides education through 6th grade only in many places. High school and college are usually privately run and beyond the cost of most of the poor. My father sent all eight of his children to high school and college through the profits of the coconut industry, producing 3 school teachers, 1 nurse, 1 medical doctor, and myself, a nutritionist/dietician.

The people in our farming community while I was growing up primarily ate food that they had grown or raised themselves. Our diet consisted mainly of rice, coconuts, vegetables and root crops, herbs (especially garlic and ginger), and some meat that was raised locally. Trips to the market were made once a week to buy primarily fresh fish caught in the ports nearby. While my parents’ generation would have grinded their own rice by hand, leaving in tact most of the bran and nutrients, after World War II during my time rice mills starting popping up making it easier to mill rice. The first mills used in my day were “crude,” and did not polish the rice, so we basically still ate healthy grains which today would be considered low-carb. Later, the mills became more sophisticated and began to polish the rice making it bright white. All of our food back then would be considered “organic” by today’s standards, as we had no access to chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Living in a tropical climate, our animals, such as chickens, cows, goats, etc., all grazed on natural green vegetation.

Coconut and coconut oil was used daily. My parents’ generation made coconut oil by hand using either the boiling or fermentation method. After World War II desiccated coconut plants and coconut oil mills were established for the booming baking industry in the US. Refined coconut oil started to make its way into the local economy as well, but at that time even the refined coconut oil made from copra (dried coconut meat) was done through a mechanical pressing that did not use solvent extracts. While some people still made coconut oil the “old fashioned” way, many began buying the cheaper, odorless coconut oil in the markets. Our natural diet was definitely a high-fat diet, a diet high in the saturated fat of coconut oil.

So what was the health of the people like in our community, where everyone ate a diet high in the saturated fat of coconut oil? Our community was part of a larger community of some 50,000 people that was served by a single government doctor in those days. While pharmaceuticals began to be manufactured in the Philippines after World War II, people in communities like ours could not afford them. We had our own traditions of dealing with simple sicknesses using local herbs and coconut oil. When people did go to town to visit the local government doctor, it was usually not for the kind of ailments that westerners go to the doctor today, such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, thyroid problems, etc. These illnesses were virtually unknown in my younger days. People went to see the doctor to treat wounds, or from sicknesses common in the tropics, such as malaria, diarrhea, dengue, etc. My father was well into his 60s before he made his first visit to the doctor, and that was for a head wound. He died in the late 1980s in a car accident in the U.S. He was in his 70s and in perfect health. Three of his older sisters still survive him to this day and are in great health. One is in her 90s. One of his sisters, my aunt, is in her late 80s and still lives in the remote area of the Philippines where I grew up, eating a traditional diet. She taught us how her generation made coconut oil by hand, which is the basis for the Tropical Traditions Virgin Coconut Oil, the most popular Virgin Coconut Oil sold in the U.S. She still shuns modern conveniences (such as electricity) and eats mostly all food that she herself has grown on her farm, and she has excellent health. Her first visit to a doctor was when she was in her early 80s. I myself have no memory of being sick growing up. I suffered my first “cold” when I was in my 30s, after I married my American husband and spent a year in the U.S. eating typical U.S. food found in grocery stores.

This picture of life in the rural Philippines is typical of those who grew up in my generation or my parents’ generation, eating traditional foods with an abundance of saturated fat found in coconut oil. Sadly, it is no longer true today. Since the mid-1970s demand for coconut oil fell so low that coconut farmers could no longer afford to support their family on the income of coconut harvests. Many people left the farms and went to the cities to find better employment, and soon adopted new dietary trends similar to western diets. Cheaper mass-produced industrial foods, particularly meats, now replace most of the local traditional foods we used to grow or raise ourselves. Snack foods and other fast foods are now made with hydrogenated coconut oil to keep it solid at the high air temperatures experienced in our tropical climate. The rice is now polished and grown with chemical fertilizers, and soft drinks loaded with refined sugars are found on every street corner, replacing the natural “buko juice”, the water from the inside of the coconuts, that my generation grew up drinking. Even the coconut water drinks still sold are usually loaded with refined sugars. Our traditional, high-fat low-carb diet has been replaced with many refined high-carb substitutes. Growing up it was very rare to see anyone considered overweight, and almost never considered “obese”, but even that is changing now as the diet has changed also.

Marianita Jader Shilhavy, CND (Certified Nutritionist/Dietician in the Philippines) earned her bachelor of science degree in nutrition in Manila. Understanding the nutrition of Filipino foods, Marianita worked for over eight years as a hospital dietician and nutritional counselor in the Philippines, using her knowledge of Asian foods to help people recover from illness.

Brian W. Shilhavy, BA, MA
Brian earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible/Greek from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and his Master of Arts degree in linguistics from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

In 1998 Marianita and Brian returned to the Philippines with their three children and renovated the old family farmhouse. By this time the coconut industry was severely depressed due to the negative U.S. campaigns against tropical oils in the 1980s and 1990s. Coconut farmers could no longer support their families on the income generated from harvesting coconuts.

Marianita and Brian set out to revive the old traditions of her parents’ generation by once again making a natural, chemical-free coconut oil. Marianita developed a system that trained families in traditional coconut oil production. This gave them an opportunity to produce this natural oil to meet new demands for this product in the U.S. and around the world. Today there are hundreds of families in the Philippines once again earning enough money from coconuts to support their families.