Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; coconut flour

I know there are tons of places to purchase coconut flour but I am looking for any recommendations on a place that has a quality product at a good price. Any thoughts or suggestions are very appreciated.

Bob's Red Mill and Azukar Organics Natural are good quality, and you can get them from Amazon.com. Bob's Red Mill went up in price recently, so the Azukar is much cheaper now, especially if you use the "subscribe and save" method.

Yeah, interestingly enough I recently ordered the Azukar. I got quite a deal at 6lbs (3-32oz bags) for $16.48. I went back like two days later and the price was gone and it was one of stock (be notified when it arrives). Why I didn't think to order more when I ordered that lot, I don't know. Bob's increased in price and so did Let's Do Organic.

I found this place, My Spice Sage, selling it in bulk for an attractive price. I was eying up the 5lb. quantity until I found the deal on the Azukar. Note that I have no affiliation with this company, have not ordered from them previously, and the coconut flour is not organic like Bob's, Azukar, or Let's Do Organic.

Update: Just noticed that Amazon has the Azukar back in stock. A three pack of 32 oz. bags for $18.37. I'm going to order more I think.

I bought some Bobs red burr mill at a local health food store and have some of the other coming on Amazon. But, I gotta say that I am pretty discouraged. I haven't tested any of it with iodine yet, but I made cookies and bread with the flour. First day I ate it, noticed increased stiffness. Yesterday had more. This morning is my worst morning in over 3 weeks. I'm going to test the flour and all of the stuff I made but do you any of you know of a starch content in the flour? Thanks again for your help.

To the best of my knowledge**, coconut flour does contain starch -- despite the fact that lots of people here are able to get away with eating it and nobody has ever mentioned it failing the do-it-yourself starch test with iodine.

Although it sounds like not one of those people who can get away with eating coconut flour right now, after a couple years of successful dieting to let the gut recover, it might work fine. That is what I'm hoping for myself.

** I had pretty much the same experience as you with respect to stiffness after eating Bob's Red Mill brand, and after about 4 or 5 days was so noticeably stiffer that my physical therapist told me "whatever you're experimenting with this week, cut it out". If you look at the nutrition label on Bob's Red Mill brand, it implies there is 1g of starch per tablespoon of flour (net carbs - fiber - sugar). So I emailed Tropical Traditions hoping they had a lower-starch coconut flour, and their response was that if I could only tolerate trace amounts of starch then try coconut cream instead -- their flour had a bit more starch than Bob's Red Mill. Coconut oil was better still, totally starch-free, but it's pretty hard to eat by itself. Neither one helps in the area of baked goods

P.S. I hope this post doesn't offend anybody who is super confident of their home iodine tests, but it seems reasonable to me that the commercial tests paid for by the flour manufacturers might be more accurate. Also here is an alternative theory as to why coconut flour is good for many people despite being low-starch rather than starch-free: like the celery root that Alinus eats, it probably contains beneficial components that often (but not always) out-weigh the effects of the starch.

Absolultely no offense taken but I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one. Here are my reasons:

1 - Fresh coconut meat does not test positive for starch so why would the flour as it's just dried coconut meat milled into powder. Hubby Jon can eat fresh coconut no worries.

2 - Jon is very sensitive to starch and will even react to small amounts of starch like spices eg ginger. And garlic. And this is despite the fact that these foods are meant to be 'beneficial' to arthritis. So I'm not sure about the whole benefits out-weighing starch argument.

3 - According to the nutrition info panel on the coconut flour I buy here in NZ...it has 59.3% total carbs of which 6.8% is sugar and 37.6% is fibre. Supposedly that leaves 14.9% starch! There is no way Jon would be able to eat something with 15% starch and walk the next day.

4 - It passes the iodine test. This is a chemical reaction which cannot be argued with. If I trusted food lists and nutrition panels rather than the test Jon would be in a wheelchair right now. For example apparently cooked pumpkin has 0.1% starch, cooked carrot and cauliflower 0.2% so surely these would be safe on NSD? NO WAY! Jon reacts to them big time and what do ya know test them with iodine and they are black black black.

So I don't believe coconut flour is starchy at all. I don't believe the nutrition panel on products are necessarily accurate. I suspect it was something else in the recipe used or perhaps something else consumed that day or over the last few days that caused the problem. Or perhaps the extremely high fibre level could be a problem for some?

As I said agree to disagree. I'm a stubborn old mule aren't I?! haha!

All the best, no offence intended.

Well you can't out-stubborn me Kiwi, but I am glad to hear you're not offended.

1. I agree that fresh coconut has no starch, but they have to do a lot of processing to turn raw coconut into flour. It is normal for high temperature processing to convert sugars to more complex carbs, including starch, which is what I believe happens here.

2. garlic at least has an additional problem that it can irritate the digestion, which would exacerbate our problems; ginger is talked up as being this wonderful natural anti-inflammatory -- but the mechanism isn't a good match for AS inflammation (as opposed to boswellia which works on TNF-alpha). From what I've heard, ginger has been mostly disappointing for KA members, even those who are not watching starch at all (so the additional starch is negligeable). On the other hand, coconut may have an advantage of some chemicals suppressing gram-negative bacteria; believe there have been studies done with coconut oil, rather than coconut flour. Plus I just saw someone mention that inulin improved their digestive balance, while it does the opposite for others; so the high fiber may be benefiting people with enough beneficial bacteria to take advantage of it.

3. Food labels may be inaccurate, but it seemed pretty weird for the manufacturer to come out and state that coconut flour has starch when it has none -- pointlessly losing themselves a sale.

I suppose all coconut flour manufacturers could have looked up some standard value -- that happened to be quite faulty -- instead of actually sending their product to be tested. Oh, and then they slightly tweaked the value with respect to other brands, so that the govt agencies wouldn't notice, that would explain why they are all significantly wrong in nearly (but not exactly) the same way...

If I were into conspiracies, I'd suggest that the same people who sneak corn starch or tapioca starch into nearly every American food-product were responsible for this campaign of misinformation about coconut flour

P.S. not trying to make fun of you with that last crack about coconut-manufacturer conspiracies, just trying to have a little fun with what is actually a sad topic for me (I hate not being able to safely eat coconut baked goods)

There is definitely something weird going on with the coconut flour labels. Every brand you buy has something different on the nutrition panel making it difficult to know what's correct. If they all truly only contain ground up coconut flesh then they really should be all the same or very similar. Makes me wonder how they actually go about getting these values they put on their labels. One website claimed it has 61% fibre! What the?! Hence my lack of trust in relying on food labels.

I really wish I knew why coconut flour doesn't fail the iodine test if it really does have any starch in it. If 0.1% can show up testing a cooked pumpkin then surely 15% starch would be somewhat noticeable? It can't be the oil preventing the iodine penetrating as the coconut has been defatted. Dunno, it's a mystery. Alls I know is Jon can eat it so that makes me happy.

Hope you can in tolerate it in future also coz you're missing out bigtime!

starch or not, the question is:
is it digestible or it passes the gut undigested? maybe this is why your husband can cope well with coconut flour.

Maybe I had a reaction because my gut is badly leaky? I dunno. I also had a massage the previous day and have heard that can turn into hell for AS sufferers.

I tested the flour, bread and cookies. Not a hint of starch in any of it. There were also some variables that weekend that could have caused problems, but I paid quite a bit attention to labels. I haven't avoided sugars yet, including maltodextrin, dextrose, HFCS, corn syrup, etc. Also, I am still taking NSAIDs, muscle relaxers and tramadol so I am sure it isn't helping me long term. I am hoping I can get off of everything soon after I visit the Rheummy and get my tramadol changed to vicodin. (I had terrible withdrawal stopping tramadol cold early this year and can start/stop vicodin without effect) That all should help with the leaky gut and will hopefully accelerate my NSD progress.

Thank you all for your input. I know I am new around here and I appreciate the welcome.