• Coconut Flour is a low carb flour. It is ideal for baking low – carb breads and baked goods. It has fewer digestible (net) carbs than any other flour, including soy! It even has fewer digestible carbs than most vegetables.

• Coconut Flour is a good source of protein. It has as much protein as wheat flour but it has none of the specific protein in wheat called "gluten". This is an advantage for a growing percentage of the population that have developed an allergy to gluten or a wheat sensitivity.

• Coconut Flour is high in fibre. It contains 38.5% fibre which is the highest percentage of dietary fibre found in any flour (wheat bran is 27% fibre). Coconut flour contains almost 3 times as much fibre as soy flour. Instead of contributing to health problems like starch and sugar do, fibre promotes good health.  On average, most Australians consume 18–25g of fibre daily. The Australian Heart Foundation recommends that adults should consume approximately 30g daily. The best way to do this is by eating foods rich in fibre such as whole grains, vegetables, and fruits. Coconut flour is another excellent way to increase your daily fibre intake. (1 Tablespoon equals approx 5 grams of fibre.) Do not switch suddenly from a low fibre to a high fibre diet as it may have adverse effects. Build up slowly. Exceeding more than 40g of total fibre daily is not recommended.

Did you know that Coconut Flour contains the highest percentage of dietary fibre in comparison to other flours? 38.5% of the flour consists of fibre with water, protein, fat and carbohydrate making up the remaining 61.5%.

Diabetics are encouraged to eat foods that have a relatively low glycemic index. The glycemic index is a measure of how foods affect blood sugar levels. The higher the glycemic index, the greater the effect a particular food has in raising blood sugar. So diabetics need to eat foods with a low glycemic index. When coconut flour is added to foods, including those high in starch and sugar, it lowers the glycemic index of these foods. This was clearly demonstrated by T. P. Trinidad and colleagues in a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2003. In their study, both normal and diabetic subjects were given a variety of foods to eat. Some of the types of food included cinnamon bread, granola bars, carrot cake, and brownies—all foods that a diabetic must ordinarily limit because of their high sugar and starch content. It was found that as the coconut flour content of the foods increased, the blood sugar response of the diabetic and non-diabetic subjects became nearly identical. In other words, coconut flour moderated the release of sugar into the bloodstream so that there was no spike in blood glucose levels.

Foods with a high glycemic index cause a sharp rise in blood sugar level. These same foods combined with coconut flour produce a moderate blood sugar response

About Niulife Coconut Flour

There are two processes used in the coconut industry to produce coconut flour. Both result in a finished product with significantly higher fibre content (between 35 & 60%) than can be found in other sources of dietary fibre in Australia. Coconut flour contains soluble and insoluble fibre, both of which are important to a healthy diet. The two processes are:

1. The fresh-dry process which produces coconut flour with a dietary fibre content of approximately 38-40%. When oil is extracted from pure coconut meat that has been grated and dried, the remaining meal or residue contains protein, fibre, minerals, carbohydrates and 10-15% fat. In this case, the fibre content represents a smaller percentage than in the wet process.

2. The wet process produces coconut flour with approximately 60% dietary fibre. Coconut milk is extracted from wet grated coconut meat and the remaining residue is dried. It contains only fibre, minerals, carbohydrates and a minimal amount of protein and fat. This makes the fibre content a larger percentage of the product since most of the fat and protein have been removed. Bruce Fife’s book “Cooking with Coconut Flour:” references flour produced by the second method. After careful consideration we have chosen to go with flour from the fresh-dry method due to its better overall nutritional content. This accounts for some differences in figures quoted in Bruce’s book. Niulife Coconut Flour is imported from the Philippines.

Using Coconut Flour

Up until recently coconut flour has not been used much for making baked goods. Since coconut flour lacks gluten and is highly absorbent it cannot be substituted entirely for wheat flour in standard recipes. If you tried to make a chocolate cake by replacing all the wheat flour with coconut flour using a standard cake recipe you would fail completely. Your cake would be hard and crumbly and taste terrible.

In most cases, coconut flour cannot be substituted completely for wheat or other flours in typical bread recipes. You need to combine it with wheat, rye, or oat flour. When making quick breads, you can generally replace up to 25 percent of the wheat flour with coconut flour, but 10 to 20 percent is better. This still increases the fibre content considerably.

If you are allergic to wheat or sensitive to gluten you won’t want to use standard bread recipes. In that case, Bruce Fife’s new book Cooking with Coconut Flour: A Delicious Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Alternative to Wheat will be of great value to you. All of the recipes in this book are completely wheat free, using only coconut flour. No other flours are needed. Recipes include breads, muffins, cakes, cookies, crackers, pies, and even main dishes like chicken pot pie and chicken and dumpling stew. You will love the German chocolate cake and the blueberry muffins. If you’re concerned about sugar you don’t need to worry, all sweet recipes include low sugar versions. These foods taste so good you would never know they are made with coconut flour rather than wheat.

You can also preview the Coconut Flour Book  or read more in the Coconut Flour by Bruce Fife (26Kb)
or check out the coconut flour recipes (for the egg intolerant all recipes use eggs) in our recipe book or download more coconut flour recipes here (30Kb)

Information contained on this page comes primarily from nutritional information published by Bruce Fife, N.D, and used with permission. Copyright© 2009. All Rights Reserved. See the book ‘Cooking with Coconut Flour’ by Bruce Fife, and check out other related articles and current research at http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org