Oil as a traditional food?

[KalinasMom]

So, I've been thinking about something.

Oil, especially CLO & coconut oil seem to be big around here. (I too love & use them!) But, I'm wondering, how "traditional" are these foods really?
I mean, in a traditional society, how many coconuts would you need to eat to get a few tablespoons of coconut oil that we are recommended to eat? And does the body have problems digesting this "unnatural" food? I'm saying "unnatural" only because it is separated from the coconut meat/fiber, etc - no longer a "whole" food. Same with olive oil. Same with cod liver oil. Butter & fat seem a little different in this aspect, as I can actually make them in my kitchen, and it is easier for me to imagine a traditional society using these..
Has anyone researched this, who can shed some light on the subject for me?

Thanks!

[BetsyPage]

Well, not sure about the source reliability, but this article says that Coconut Oil has been traditionally used for about 4000 years. To me this makes sense since there *are* non-industrial methods to extract the oil, right?

http://www.coconut-connections.com/vco.htm

[Junegoddess]

Yes, there are very low-tech ways to extract coconut oil. I wish I had a link handy.

As for CLO, the old-fashioned way was to toss the cod livers into a barrel. Over the course of many months, they fermented (it was probably cold enough to prevent them from rotting). Then people would dip into the barrel for the pungent oil that had risen to the top. From what I remember reading, I think it was a neverending barrel... just keep dumping in cod livers, maybe stir a little...

ICK.

I prefer our industrial methods.

But, people recognized the health-promoting value of that oil a long time ago, and there is a low-tech way to get it out.

[phroggies]

I've been curious about this vis-a-vis olive oil lately--I knew it was old but wondered how old. So I got on Wikipedia. . . .

A widespread view exists that the first cultivation took place on the island of Crete. The earliest surviving olive oil amphorae date to 3500 BC (Early Minoan times), though the production of olive is assumed to have started before 4000 BC. An alternative view retains that olives were turned into oil by 4500 BC by Canaanites in present-day Israel.

(Emphasis mine). So, assuming we can trust the source, pretty traditional. . . But it is my understanding that many of the vegetable oils common in the SAD (and frowned upon by TF advocates) today require high-tech extraction processes.

[wagamama]

Palm oil has been used for 1000s of years in West Africa. But the extraction is labour-intensive, and I do wonder about the amounts that people consumed -- maybe not as much as we do today?

And anyway, a few 1000 years is not very long in the history of humankind ...

[AJP]

Olive oil extraction can be very low tech (and most of it is). It's basically just pressing and straining out the chunks, it's been done for thousands of years as mentioned above with methods you could do in your own kitchen.

I don't know much about coconut oil production or its history, but I try to keep my food more local than that, so I rarely buy it largely for that reason. (Olive oil is produced in my state in vast quantities.)

ETA: I know some olive oil production is more industrialized, solvents and whatnot, but those processes are not necessary, and real EVOO is low tech.