Coconut Water Nature’s miracle health drink Chemistry, Health Benefits, Packaging, Storage and Technologies : A Review

Coconut water is a natural, nutritious, health,
and therapeutic drink from coconut palm trees.
The main nutrients of coconut water are minerals,
sugars, protein, fat, and other minor nitrogenous
and phenolic compounds, vitamins, etc. Coconut
water has a typical flavor of coconuts due to deltalactone and has polyphenol oxidase, peroxidase, and
some other enzymes. The composition of coconut
water depends on many factors such as soil, nut
maturity, variety, and climate. Coconut water is
classified as tender coconut water (TCW) and mature
coconut water (MCW). TCW has been mainly used
as a natural drink while MCW is usually discarded.
MCW showed much better in hypolipidemic action
in cholesterol-fed rats than TCW according to studies
in experimental rats and therefore may be carefully
collected and bottled for use also as a health drink.
The healing therapies of tender coconut water have
been scientifically proven. Experimental studies
involving humans and animals showed that TCW
can be used to prevent oxidative stress, provide
antioxidant activity, prevent lipid peroxidation
activity, improve lipid profile, control blood pressure,
improve cardio protective activity, provide antiinflammatory effects, diarrhea therapy, to increase
hemoglobin levels, anti-diabetic effects and antithrombotic activities and probably many more.