Tender Coconut Water

One of the hangovers from a year living in the US was the habit of drinking cola especially in situations where you weren't sure of the water quality. While tender coconut is available in most of the places in Karnataka, it was no match for the one's we are used to in coconut country - Kerala. Typically they are no fresh because they are not sourced locally. There was also this propaganda of coconut is not good for one's health, which is an absolute nonsense as I figured out later. So it was usually avoided unless the aerated stuff was not available and it turns out that the colas are available in remote corners of the country as well. And in a coconut country, tender coconuts are considered to be of less value than the real coconut which finds its use everywhere.

But the Cola problems in India forced me to think a bit about the use of aerated drinks, one was the blatant sucking of underground water by Coca-Cola at Plachimada, another was the claim of pesticides in the aerated drinks. But the enlightening article about this controversy was a column in Swaminomics, Milk is more Dangerous than Cola, where Swaminathan Ankleshwara Iyer questioned the legitimacy of even drinking milk which was another animal's milk specifically produced for its offspring. Though the argument was that milk would be equally or more contaminated than the colas, my takeaway was that both drinking Cola and Milk was very unnatural when we have really good alternatives. I have since then quit drinking milk and Cola.

Since then I have been drinking tender coconut water and an occasional sugar cane juice outside of home and lemon juice with honey at home. The #1 drink remains tender coconut, which is packaged very well and no processing happens before you get to drink it - very natural indeed. There is also no need to store it in any special way, it stays fresh for at least a week or more. While the fresh ones have some fizz, the taste doesn't really change with the natural packaging. It is indeed expensive than the cola, but the availability in Bangalore is as good or better. These are specialized corner shops on the street manned by people with special expertise in opening the tender coconut. Though they offer plastic straws for you to drink, I don't use the straws to make it a clean drink.

We have couple of shops nearby to pick up the tender coconuts, one of them is run by someone who goes around and gets fresh ones from the trees around and he knows his job pretty well and very passionate about his job as well. He can tell you which one's have more water or better taste by a tap on the coconut. You could easily be fooled if you just go with external appearance. The husk can hide the real size of the shell. If he is not around(when he is sick or he doesn't get the produce), I usually have couple of tender coconuts a day. Otherwise I go the other shop, which sources its produce from outside town and their expertise about the produce is limited.

Another cheaper option is sugar cane juice(they say milk). It is just 6-7 INR on street side shops and 10-12INR in regular shops where they have to pay rent for the shop. I was skeptical of the hygiene of the shops because it need some processing before you can drink it. But tried couple of times and found that they do keep everything clean and hygieneic as well. But unlike tender coconut water, you can't drink too much of this because of the high sugar content. The neighborhood juice shops are also a pretty good alternative for the Bangaloreans, but we don't have any descent ones around except for the musambi juice shops on the street. I would rather eat the fruits as it is than sucking its juice which needs additional processing and creates more waste.

While Americans may not have other natural alternatives and Colas may have become part of their lifestyle, I believe there are many natural alternatives in the Indian scenario and tender coconut remains #1 choice at least in south India. You can easily wean away from the synthetic aerated drinks and bottled juices. I used to drink Gatorade as a sport drink for my runs, but I have since completely shifted to plain water and tender coconut which is by itself a great sport drink. I stock up several of them for a run to keep myself hydrated before and after the runs.