Coconut water is becoming a hot commodity. It’s turning up in health food stores and even in dollar stores. Nutrients are being added to the water to make it really good for you. It comes in a variety of flavors to challenge any taste buds. Coconut water is different than coconut milk in that it is from a young coconut that hasn’t completely ripened. Ask any health food store employee and they may tell you that “It is thought to be replenishing in moisture and helps with dehydration. It can replenish electrolytes and it may help with weight.” Restoring electrolytes can be crucial in someone who has diarrhea. But when you think about coconut water causing any weight loss you have to ask yourself does coconut water cause diarrhea in the first place? The main thing to remember when considering coconut water is that it has more to do with dehydration. But it may not be an effective cure all for wrinkles as some may think unless the wrinkles are caused specifically from dehydration.
Besides the flavors of coconut water that you can choose from there is coconut water with gel. Coconut water that contains gel again goes back to a young coconut that hasn’t fully matured. The gel is the immature meat of the coconut. So the coconut water that has gel contains the meat of the coconut before it has hardened.
You can get a better idea of what coconut water and it’s gel is by comparing it to an immature pecan. An immature developing pecan is sometimes referred to as green. You can visually tell that a pecan is green in two ways. When you scan a pecan tree for developing nuts you will notice that the green outer casing of the pecan will be small at first and as the nut matures the green casing will grow and eventually it will dry and crack open allowing the pecan in it’s hardened shell to fall out. If you crack an immature pecan open while it is still enclosed in it’s green casing you will notice that the pecan is sort of watery and kind of mushy.
If you eat a green pecan it lacks flavor and squishes in your mouth. This may be a big reason why flavor is added to coconut water. It just doesn’t taste that good without it. If you can stand how a green pecan tastes then you might not mind the gel in coconut water. You might think of the gel as pulp in orange juice, which is the meat of the orange.