On VCO

by Roger B Rueda

Two years ago, I brought home a few bottles of virgin coconut oil—small glass vials of amber promise, intended for my mother’s comfort, her brittle bones, her tired skin. The labels bore the serenity of leaf and sun, and the price tags carried the weight of something almost sacramental. I had not expected the cost to feel like atonement.

Virgin coconut oil, they said. And some—more audacious, perhaps more performative—went so far as to claim extra virgin. I paused then, as one might pause at the misuse of a beloved word. Extra—what a fragile adjective to throw into the economics of health. For coconut oil, unlike its cousin olive, has no hierarchy of virtue sanctioned by tradition or science. The phrase, in this case, was ornamentation. An embellishment. A sleight of mouth.

And so, I began to wonder.

How is it that a substance so locally sourced, so abundantly available in our soil, becomes a luxury to those who live closest to the tree? The oil, extracted not from distant lands but from the very kernel of our geography, becomes something—through bottle, brand, and marketing myth—that is estranged from its people.

I have read, with some suspicion, the claims of these companies—each one declaring their oil the purest, the safest, the most exalted in the pantheon of natural remedies. But where are the long-term studies? The controlled trials? The whispers of side effects that time alone may reveal? They do not say. Or they say too much.

What I do see is this: the poor cannot afford it. The irony settles in the throat like an unchewed seed. The very people whose ancestors harvested coconuts under the brutal sun, who fed their children rice with oil-stewed vegetables when meat was too expensive—these same people are now priced out of what was once their birthright.

And for what? The gloss of a brand? The haughty font of “Extra Virgin”?

We must speak plainly. The production of virgin coconut oil does not justify its current inflation. It does not require elaborate chemistry nor imported machinery. The process, when kept true, involves no chemicals, no high heat, no gilded factory. The oil, stable and quietly miraculous, speaks for itself. What requires refinement, perhaps, is the conscience of those who sell it.

It is time to ask: where is the obligation to the people? Where is the hand that gives, not just the hand that markets? If this oil indeed nourishes, strengthens, and heals, should it not be placed within reach of the most vulnerable? Is it not a shame that foreigners partake of what Filipinos cannot afford?

If we are to build a nation of health and dignity, then let our remedies—those from our own land—be shared. Let companies remember that commerce without compassion is a kind of slow violence.

And if they must insist on their slogans, let them, at least, earn them. Let them earn “virgin” with integrity, and let “extra” not be a lie wrapped in price.

The coconut tree stands without pretense. Its fruit falls freely. It does not know profit. Perhaps we might learn something from its silence.

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