Maria Blanco, CFH, is a practicing Certified Family Herbalist, Holistic Nutrition Consultant and Naturopath. Emphasizing prevention, she specializes in food allergies, family and childhood nutrition, dementia care support, diabetes and weight loss management. An avid writer and editor, Maria is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Coconut Oil Diet, hundreds of nutrition, health and wellness articles, and has several new self-paced wellness courses currently under development. Her Blanco Botanicals website and Botanically Speaking blog are devoted to empowering her clients and subscribers with the most accurate and reliable nutrition and wellness information available. Maria is also the expert contributor at FoodMattersMastery.com; a beat writer at Yahoo! News on food safety matters; and topic editor of the Men's Health and the Engineering topics at the online magazine Suite101. Author home: Carencro, LA (southwest Louisiana).