Have you ever wandered around the produce section of a health food store and seen white, cylindrical/cone shaped items? The sign reads “young Thai coconuts”, but it doesn’t look like the typical coconut you’ve always known. This odd looking food-item has an amazing nutrient make-up.
Coconut water is the liquid that is found inside young, green coconuts, not to be confused with the brown hairy coconuts found at most grocery stores. Young coconuts, if left to mature, would eventually become their brown counterparts. As a coconut ages the water level decreases as rich coconut meat grows inside.
The water found inside young coconuts is among the purest water on earth and is naturally very high in electrolytes. In fact, the electrolyte make-up exactly matches the composition of human blood plasma and during WWII severely wounded soldiers in the Pacific received coconut water in place of a plasma transfusion. For those that may not believe this, doctors in Solomon gave a patient coconut water for 2 days when the hospital ran out of IV fluid. The patient suffered no adverse effects (see reference: Am. J. Emerg. Med. 18[1]: 108-11, 2000).
Nutritional Stats for Coconut Water (per 100ml)·
- Coconut water contains 15 times more potassium than a banana
- Coconut water has less sodium than sports drinks (coconut water has about 25 mg as opposed to 41mg in sports drinks and 200 mg in energy drinks
- Coconut water has only 5g of natural sugars, whereas sports and energy drinks have a high amount of processed and/or unnatural sugars
- Coconut water is high in chloride 118mg
- Coconut water is also high in vitamin C and B vitamins
So now you how amazing coconut water is… and you went out and bought a coconut. You might be wondering how to open it. I suggest watching someone else open one first. Most health food stores will crack the top for you and give you a straw and spoon (to scoop out the tender meat inside). It’s easy to crack at home with a good chef knife.
Health food stores also carry pasteurized and packaged coconut water. These are great as well, but I prefer water straight from the nut itself. It has a much different flavor and contains living enzymes that pasteurization destroys. Again, the packaged versions are amazing as well and do a much better job than unnatural sports drinks.
As a side note, I recently introduced my dad and his girlfriend to young coconuts. My dad is quite crafty and called me a few days later to tell me he sawed the shell in half and made me a rustic cereal bowl...so they can be re-used! I'll post a pic to my blog when I receive the bowl.
