Put the Straw In the Coconut and Drink It All Up

The next time you’re feeling particularly parched, you might want to pour yourself a tall, cold glass of coconut water. It’s the latest craze in healthy beverages.

I want to like coconut water, I really do.

It has more than 15 times the electrolytes found in sports drinks, more potassium than two bananas, no fat, no cholesterol and is low in calories. It’s the perfect beverage for when you’ve just finished an intense workout, spent the day laboring in the yard or done battle with a stomach virus.

Despite its health benefits, it tastes like dirty water to me.

Coconut water is marketed as a way to hydrate naturally. Plain old water, minus the coconut, seems just about as natural as you can get, but this beverage also helps replace electrolytes that we lose naturally in a variety of ways, including when we sweat.

According to the online medical site, Medline Plus, electrolytes are electrically charged minerals in our body. The major electrolytes include sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate, phosphate and sulfate. Levels of electrolytes can become too low or too high when the amount of water in our body changes. In order for our cells, organs, muscles and nerves to function properly, electrolytes must stay in balance.

Coconuts produce two forms of liquid--coconut water and coconut milk. The milk is derived from the flesh of the coconut by finely grating it, steeping it in water and then pressing or squeezing it through cheesecloth. Though high in saturated fat, it also offers multiple health benefits because of its anti-carcinogenic, anti-microbial, anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties. It is most often used in cooking.

Coconut water, on the other hand, is the clear liquid that is found inside young coconuts. It can be readily poured out if you were to poke a hole in the end of a coconut. As a coconut matures, coconut meat replaces the water.

I purchased the Vita Coco brand of coconut water . At $2.79 per 17 fluid ounce container, this water is not inexpensive. I found another brand in the Latin foods section, but it had added sugar and other ingredients that would negate the health benefits, in my opinion.

I had high hopes for this product. I figured it couldn’t possibly taste any worse than other sports drinks, and since I like coconut, it would likely taste much better.

My initial sip of the plain coconut water left me with one thought—blech! I forced myself to drink some more thinking that perhaps I had rushed to judgment and it might grow on me.

It didn’t.

Next, I tried the coconut water with pineapple. The package claimed that it would taste like a pina colada, and I figured this would be a big improvement. It was slightly better, I guess, but it really just tasted like dirty pineapple-flavored water.

In an effort to provide a more well-rounded review, I gave the remainder of the two waters to my husband. He ran the Great Race 10K on Sunday in Pittsburgh and had instructions to drink the water immediately after the race.

His reaction was not as negative as mine but lukewarm as a whole. He thought both of the flavors were OK but said that after pushing himself to a personal best time in the race, he would have drunk just about anything. Overall, he didn’t feel his thirst was quenched any better than it would have been with plain old water, and if he feels he really needs a sports drink, he’d rather have Gatorade.