Coconut water concentrate 50% off at Swansons Vitamins

Ok, just read that article you linked. This is the gist of what i got reading it. That manufacturing claims of said benefits of coconut water involves a lot of health claim hype (would not disagree), and that many of these are not as pure as the companies promote e.g. they are altered in some way (again, would not disagree), and lastly some companies hide their connections to much larger corporations perhaps in order to seem like a smaller and more caring company.

But even if a company adds ascorbic acid (a form of vitamin c), "natural" flavors (the one i recommended here does not list "natural flavors" like some brands do), it has less sodium than claimed, and is pasteurized, i still don't see the basic product as being fake, or not real coconut water. Altered some yes, not 100% natural yes, but more or less coconut water. Most packaged orange juice is altered or processed in different ways, and yet is more or less still orange juice.

I wouldn't disagree that it's better to get the frozen stuff you mentioned, or better yet to buy fresh, young coconuts, but i think the previous characterizations might be a little extreme. The fake food watch site wasn't claiming that companies were completely creating a synthesized product, but mainly criticizing the slick marketing ploys surrounding same.

Well, news to us, pretty much every large company, health food product, etc, etc. out there uses some slick marketing strategies, ploys, and the like and hype is everywhere and with so many different kinds of products. In a corporate, consumer, captilistic society we are awash in an ocean of truth bending, exaggerating, sometimes out right lying, info manipulation, etc. motivated by and for self, materialistic gain.

Lol, Sean, re: the studies, i did warn that it wasn't completely trust worthy because it was more or less a PR and marketing piece.

I suspect they are fudging with both how they are using their terms and quantifying same.

Anyways, while i can't speak to that particular product, not ever having used it, i can speak to the acid alkaline concept and theory, and know from years of repeat experience and experimentation. Hence, i suspect there is some truth (albeit exaggerated or misleading) to the claims.

Those 2.25 years i went without even getting a hint of a common cold, i worked at a school and was surrounded fairly constantly by kids who were getting sick and working closely with them and quite subjected to all these various germs. Am i a super healthy super man? No, i just have a fairly disciplined diet whose primary basis is in the acid-alkaline concept.

Highly agree with what you outlined about food in general, especially about going to farmers markets, eating whole foods primarily, avoiding gluten, etc, Also agree about how the system has become.

Last thought before I disconnect from the internet for 10 days!

What I take from an article like that Re: the manipulation of what coconut water is, is this:

Since there is only a sliver of real coconut water in the drink, perhaps enough to make it qualified to be labeled as such, then clearly it will not have the natural level of potassium, etc in it that a nice, fresh, young coconut would have. So, they add synthetic nutrients (that they arent even required to list as an ingredient) from dubious sources which have often been shown to be completely ignored by the body.

So it's basically like drinking water and taking a multi-vitamin only it costs a lot more.

Hope you enjoy your trip! I'm a bit jealous.

Hey Justin,
I'm not trying to say that your diet doesn't work for you or that it wouldn't be beneficial for people but your explanation doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe it was because your were trying to over simplify things, but I think trying to explain mechanisms did more harm than good to your argument (I'm referring to your post on the 13th).

In the hand/water explanation the water you talk about "the positive force of electricity". But electricity is inherently negative, so that confuses me.

Then: "What happens when you add some salts, like sodium? Bam, you'd get shocked because the electricity can then flow very well throughout the water via the negative charge of same."

I think there is ambiguity of terms here that could be confusing. Are you referring to table salt and just short-handing it as sodium? Or saying you'd be shocked if you just added the element sodium to the water?

"Basic potassium is the most negatively charged mineral. Some other negatively charged ones are sodium, calcium, and magnesium for the more macro minerals. Some positively charged ones are sulfur, phosphorus, and iodine for example."

Do you have these all flipped? Postassium, Sodium, Calcium, and magnesium are all found as a cations (positively charged) and sulfur, phosphorus and iodine are negatively charged.

"All in a natural package that nature created, and the nutrients of same are highly bioavailable. You can throw a bunch of crappy, treated/over processed table salt and potassium chloride into some water, and yes it will become more alkalizing, but these are not particularly bioavailable forms, and what the body doesn't use is a waste product and must be gotten rid of."

This just sounds like you're repeating marketing hype. You're acting like they take coconuts, pour the CW out and get rid of some of the water. This is a vitamin company that is selling it at a fraction of the cost and are probably doing exactly what you said you didn't want. Throwing some table salt and potassium chloride (and whatever else is in it) in water. Additionally these are ions in water, not more complex vitamins or proteins so how would the bio-availability change?

"…will help to energize the body by helping out the electro-magnetic flow of the nervous system"

The notion that the pH level change from the foods you eat (which I believe is so insignificant that it isn't going to pull a normal person out of the ~7.3-7.4 range) is somehow going to affect your electrochemical brain function is unfounded and relies too much on uneducated assumptions. In addition to the blood buffer system (which would take a lot of throw the pH balance off, unless you stopped breathing or peeing, and even if you could throw the balance off enough you wouldn't be a very functional person), the molecules would have to cross the blood brain barrier and be in high enough concentrations to adjust an additional buffer system (cerebrospinal fluid).

I am not against whole foods, or healthy eating and I believe you can improve your health doing so. There is just some faulty logic presented and like I said maybe it was because you were trying to oversimplify and I hope this doesn't come across as an attack.

Hi William,

You are correct, i made a major error in describing the acid alkaline theory and mixed up the inherent charge of the minerals with their effects of alkalizing or acidifying in the body. I just took out a couple of my books based on this and they talk about the acid or alkaline effect happening through binding and attracting particles of the opposite charge. So the positively charged minerals like potassium, calcium, etc bind/attract negatively charged depending on the inherent force. Ultimately the acid alkaline balance relates to the ratio of hydroxl ions to that of hydrogen ions. So the cations, the positively charged minerals (potassium etc), will attract and bond the hydroxl ions potentially faciliating a surplus of that, which is what leads to the alkalizing effect. The basic premise & effect is the same though, large amounts of potassium, magnesium, calcium, etc in foods will tend to have an alkalizing effect in the body (not considering other important factors, like protein ratio, amount of calories, etc).

It's been quite awhile since i've read the specifics of this stuff, but either way i want to apologize for the major error and thank you for pointing that out.

William wrote, "This just sounds like you're repeating marketing hype. You're acting like they take coconuts, pour the CW out and get rid of some of the water. This is a vitamin company that is selling it at a fraction of the cost and are probably doing exactly what you said you didn't want. Throwing some table salt and potassium chloride (and whatever else is in it) in water. Additionally these are ions in water, not more complex vitamins or proteins so how would the bio-availability change?"

To be honest, and i've said from the get go, i DO NOT know exactly what they do or don't do to produce and manufacture coconut water. I would like to know how much they add or don't with this stuff and generally how altered or not it is. If there is someone who works directly with this and doesn't mind disclosing the industry secrets, please speak up now.

Re: minerals, it's not so simple as that. For example, calcium carbonate is not as bioavailable as other forms of calcium that are bonded with other stuff. It is common though, because it's cheap and readily available.

"The notion that the pH level change from the foods you eat (which I believe is so insignificant that it isn't going to pull a normal person out of the ~7.3-7.4 range) is somehow going to affect your electrochemical brain function is unfounded and relies too much on uneducated assumptions. In addition to the blood buffer system (which would take a lot of throw the pH balance off, unless you stopped breathing or peeing, and even if you could throw the balance off enough you wouldn't be a very functional person), the molecules would have to cross the blood brain barrier and be in high enough concentrations to adjust an additional buffer system (cerebrospinal fluid)."

This part i did oversimplify. As i stated earlier, it's not so much changes in the blood that happen to any degree, as the body works extremely hard to keep that in a rather narrow range. It's the buildup in the tissues of the acid which is what really wreaks havoc.

That foods can alter the ph of the body to a significant degree in some ways and in some systems of the body, is apparent to me as i have, like many, have used ph strips to monitor and test the ph of my urine and saliva. Definite and noticeable fluctuations have been noted from day to day, and occasionally even from meal to meal. These strips have shown up as yellow-green color to medium blue.

But this is not a black and white process or indication. A lot depends on what you normally eat and what your levels are normally at, and temporarily introducing foods that are either highly alkalizing or acid forming, can temporarily skew results.

This is the BIG problem though with modern medicine, it's extremely reductionist in nature, and doesn't consider the body as an interconnected whole enough. What happens in the rest of the tissue and the blood of the body, will eventually affect the brain even if not by direct "blood brain barrier". Imbalance in one area, leads to weakness and imbalance in different areas.

Re: whether or not it works, all i can say, is to test it out for yourself. I've been testing it out on myself for about 12 years now. I've healed myself of the mysterious "heat allergy" largely by and through paying attention to this concept, i keep my body's psoriasis in check usually quite well via this theory/diet, and out of all the people i personally know, i seem to get sick the least. I use to be more "normal" and get sick more often like the many others i know before changing my diet in accordance with this concept.

I consistently avoid or knock out colds using this, and over a 12 year period. That kind of repeated experience is extremely powerful. Here is an experience in the beginning that my wife and i had when we first moved in with each other. She had just started to show strong symptoms of both strep throat and pink eye at the same time. I decided to test this theory/concept on her–which i was just learning about and open minded but skeptical. I prepared her food that i had read was very highly to moderately alkalizing, and only such foods. Within two days of symptoms first showing, she was back to normal.

With repeated experiences like this, someone could speak to me all day about theoretics and so called "medical facts", or tell me it's all just placebo effect, but being a practical person, actual experience is what i go more by and which converts/changes my belief systems. Mainstream, modern medicine only truly knows a fraction of what there is to know yet. Mainstream medicine tells me that psoriasis is a genetic disease and that there are no other cause besides genetics. They don't treat it by diet whatsoever. They treat it primarily by outside creams, UV therapy, and other external means primarily.

Yet, i've had this since before age 16, but started treating it around then via natural means of diet, herbs, and exercise. Diet has a HUGE effect on it–the most besides stress. I now don't give a crap what modern medicine says about psoriasis because they have failed in treating the causes, and didn't even treat the symptoms that well either. I've come to learn and know that it's primarily not genetic, but a digestive-intestinal issue. When i take herbs that specifically treat and help with that, like slippery elm bark tea, it powerfully reduces symptoms. When i avoid certain foods, the symptoms go away, when i eat more alkaline, the same.

Those same experts will tell me and you and everyone that there is nothing to the acid-alkaline theories, and it's pseudo science. I've begun to wonder if the large and hugely profitable medical-pharmaceutical-educational complex truly wants to heal people or just continue treating outside symptoms and keeping people dependent on the care. I suspect that most doctors, personally, do want to heal, but doctors have become more the middlemen.

So i highly suggest and recommend testing it out yourself before coming to any staid belief systems. When you form a belief about something with no repeat experience, it becomes very hard to change said beliefs because perception and beliefs are so intertwined and mutually affecting. If there is no initial openness and if you already "know" something, you won't be open to experience that suggests otherwise.

But back to Coconut water, indirectly you bring up a very good point and something i've been wanting to add before i saw your post. Coconut water, by itself, will not create any major changes in your body just from occasionally or even often using this stuff. That's not the way this whole thing works, it's a cumulative and overall diet AND lifestyle thing. If you eat my alkaline forming foods, avoid certain combinations, exercise properly, have positive and loving attitude, etc as a trend, AND you use things like Coconut water, that's where there will be more of an effect as regards alkalization.

You can't eat the typical SAD and have that lifestyle and expect that any single food or drink is going to do you much good in and of itself.

RE: electricity–i am fairly ignorant in the subject, but my understanding was that electricity involved both positive and negative charges, and the very essence of it happens through the interplay of both. That's what i was trying to describe, albeit in a very non technical and probably really inadequate way.

Oh, there is no doubt at all that 'coconut water' is a total scam. The way the labeling has been done shows that. The lawyers must have had a field day creating that. Mind you, one has to wonder at the morality and ethics of the company lawyers. They MUST know they are absolutely scamming the public.

OK, come in sucker. not the first, not the last.

> races like the Tour de France you'll often see riders grabbing a coke from the car
> especially on hot days or near the end of a race.
Indeed, and why? Three very good reasons:
* 300 mL of really cold water cools the brain stem and throat as it goes down
* a big sugar hit for very short-term energy boost near the end of the race
* a legal!! hit of a powerful stimulant (caffeine) near the end of the race

Note that using caffeine before a race as a stimulant is probably illegal, but the officials ignore the can of Coke near the end. Wonder what tolerance that cost a certain company?
[Correction: the ban on caffeine has been removed.]

Disclosure: A large chocolate Magnum ice cream and an cold Coke from a cafe/bar on a high pass in anywhere in Europe – yep, been there many times! Works great!

Cheers

Magnum Bar w/almonds……food of the gods!

It isn't the "coconut water" that makes the difference, it is the belief that it does.

Next year another miracle product will come along and for a while that will work too.
(come back to this in a few years time and let me know…)

If your medical or emotional condition is aggravated by stress of course finding something that you believe works will help.
For some it is supplements,for others is prayer or meditation or a particular exercise but what you do is not as important as believing that it does work.

"Mind you, one has to wonder at the morality and ethics of the company lawyers."

Insert big chuckle here. ;o)

"They MUST know they are absolutely scamming the public."

The second principle students learn in their first year of law school is that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the American Public". *

* H. L. Mencken

This is not as healthy as the raw, non-pasteurized c-water that can be had.. It is also more expensive.

Franco, who on this thread ever referred to coconut water as a "miracle product"? All i said was that it has a lot of electrolytes (besides sodium, which is overloaded into so many of our foods anyways), especially potassium. I said it helps to boost energy, particularly if you add b vitamins, and i said because of the large amounts of potassium and magnesium and small amounts of calcium, it will have a strong alkalizing effect on the body, which in my experience is only a good thing unless overdone (which is hard to do).

Not once did i refer to it as anythign even close to being a miracle product.

More specifically, this is what i wrote in my last post before your reply on this thread,

"But back to Coconut water, indirectly you bring up a very good point and something i've been wanting to add before i saw your post. Coconut water, by itself, will not create any major changes in your body just from occasionally or even often using this stuff. That's not the way this whole thing works, it's a cumulative and overall diet AND lifestyle thing. If you eat many alkaline forming foods, avoid certain combinations, exercise properly, have positive and loving attitude, etc as a trend, AND you use things like Coconut water, that's where there will be more of an effect as regards alkalization.*

You can't eat the typical SAD and have that lifestyle and expect that any single food or drink is going to do you much good in and of itself."

*should have also added, " and overall health"

Brian wrote, "This is not as healthy as the raw, non-pasteurized c-water that can be had.. It is also more expensive."

I completely agree.

I used to use coconut milk/water as a growth hormone when growing hosta plants invitro.

Make sure you aren't growing any extra body parts when ingesting this stuff;)

This stuff has been know to enlarge body parts;)

Hey Justin,
Sorry for the delayed response. I wasn't trying to defend the SAD in any way. It sucks.

"It's the buildup in the tissues of the acid which is what really wreaks havoc.
That foods can alter the ph of the body to a significant degree in some ways and in some systems of the body, is apparent to me as i have, like many, have used ph strips to monitor and test the ph of my urine and saliva."

This doesn't really do anything to help your theory because a changing pH in your urine just suggests that your blood buffer system is working properly and doesn't provide any information about differing tissue pH. Additionally if pH is the cause of diseases why aren't areas of the body that have super acidic pH's always diseased or nor functioning properly? Lactic acid builds up in your muscles when you exercise, but your body breaks it down and eliminates it. You claim, and rightfully so, that exercise is good for you. But it's an activity that raises the pH (temporarily) of tissues which is contrarian to the pH theory (it's easier for me to call what you're talking about this). The pH theory wants it both ways in the sense that in some areas the body (cells) can alter the pH, but not in other places. I don't believe this to be true.

"This is the BIG problem though with modern medicine, it's extremely reductionist in nature, and doesn't consider the body as an interconnected whole enough."

I don't think that statement is a fair characterization because it's not so much that they don't consider the whole body, it's that many of the same hormones/cytokines etc are used by different pathways. So you target one and it has other effects not because they aren't considering them, but because you can't (yet) target something that specific. That doesn't mean they don't know what is going on. It's a compromise that we have to live with until medicine advances. I'm not saying they know everything, there's obviously a lot of learn, but that isn't a reason to reject things they do know.

"Re: whether or not it works, all i can say, is to test it out for yourself. I've been testing it out on myself for about 12 years now."

I'm not saying that it doesn't work, I'm just saying there's a really good chance it isn't working the way you think it is.

"Mainstream medicine tells me that psoriasis is a genetic disease and that there are no other cause besides genetics. They don't treat it by diet whatsoever. They treat it primarily by outside creams, UV therapy, and other external means primarily."

Psoriasis IS a genetic disease. It's an autoimmune disorder primarily driven by T-cells, and as a result an increased production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Different creams work on different parts of the pathway to inhibit various signals/receptors and to try to curb the symptoms, they don't fix the mutations in the DNA to cure it (we aren't there yet either). The fact that your diet can alter the manifestation of the disease doesn't mean it's cured. It also doesn't do anything to suggest it isn't genetic. There are a number of explanations of why it might be working, but it's difficult to test, so I'm not going to say what about your diet is helping. pH is highly unlikely (because of all the things we've talked about) but *could* explain it by altering gene expression (again cells work very hard to keep the pH at a level they are comfortable with) If I had to guess, it would be that some nutrient mimics some part of the pathway that inhibits T-cells, but that's unfounded and simply a guess.

I think it's natural to want to explain what is happening for your own sake and to share what has been working for your with others. But if you dig a bit deeper into the science you'll see why the pH theory isn't proven or accepted. It relies on claims that are difficult to test and emotional aspects (mainstream medicine doesn't know everything so they don't know anything, and there is a larger oppression based on money).

*stupid spelling errors.