I was asked the other day about my first experience with coconut oil and it was not a pleasant one at all. It's the reason why we have spent so much time and money to make sure we only sell really top quality organic oils in our store. I don't want people repeating the same mistake I did.

My first experience wasn't with eating the oil, it was actually a hair care issue. My husband had a dry flaky scalp and after reading a few articles about it being great to nourish the scalp (which it is), I thought I'd rub some in to his scalp to see if it would help with the dandruff situation.

At the time, he had a crew cut, so it was a pretty easy task. We went outside in to the sun, I grabbed a big spoonful of organic coconut oil and rubbed it in to his scalp. At the time, I was extremely sensitive to smells and wasn't a fan of the smell of this oil. I'm not going to name and shame the brand, needless to say, it's NOT something we sell.

After about 3 minutes, the combination of the weird smokey / rancid / off smell of this particular oil and dirty hair out in the sun made me physically sick. I was nauseous and had to walk away. After this, I didn't go near a jar of the stuff for around 6 months. After several conversations with people about the vast differences in taste and smell, I decided to be brave and ordered in over a dozen different brands to taste test. We rejected a large pile. The good ones are what we decided to stock. Now, I haven't tasted every coconut oil on the market, and I'm sure there's a sprinkling of small boutique brands that are great that we haven't put our hands and tastebuds on yet, but if you come across a major brand, there's a pretty good chance we road tested and rejected it. I won't name names, it's not the right thing to do, but we ate our way through a lot of jars.

Today, I cook with it most days. Once a week, I cover my body from head to toe, my hair too, and relax for about 20 minutes before I jump in the shower and wash it off. My skin feels hydrated and my hair is soft. I haven't had a hair cut in over 8 months and I have no split ends. Plenty of grey hair, but no split ends 🙂