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These foods have gone from being considered healthy to unhealthy to not just healthy but even essential.
In the future, when we're zipping around the biosphere on our jetpacks and eating our nutritionally complete food pellets, we won't have to worry about what foods will kill us or which will make us live forever.
Until then, we're left to figure out which of the food headlines we should take to heart, and which should be taken with a grain of unrefined, mineral-rich sea salt. Low-fat or high-fat? High-protein or vegan? If you don't trust what your body tells you, remember that food science is ever evolving. Case in point: The seven foods below are ancient. But they've gone from being considered healthy (long ago) to unhealthy (within the last generation or two) to healthy again, even essential.
1) Coconut Oil
Old wisdom: Coconut oil is a saturated-fat body bomb that should be avoided.
New wisdom: Coconut oil can cure what ails you.
Talk about an about-face. Anyone who grew up eating such nutritious fare as SpaghettiOs, Nestle Quik and Bisquick—actually, anyone old enough to vote in the United States—probably doesn't remember a jar of coconut oil in the cupboard, or anywhere in the family diet.
Why? Coconut oil was stigmatized after flawed studies decades ago tested partially hydrogenated coconut oil for its ill effects. Now, of course, we know that the chemical process of hydrogenation is what does a body ill. That's true whether the oil consumed is coconut, corn, canola, soy or any other.
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