Everyman’s drink, the tender coconut water is being promoted as a healthful beverage and available in bottle
Going nuts Over tender coconuts
The fancy cars sweep past swiftly. So do the ditsy young things, who probably prefer frappes anyway. And the body builders and gym bunnies guzzle protein shakes and energy drinks instead. So, for once, it’s not the rich and the beautiful who make the most of this resource. It’s Everyman, walking sweaty streets, often stopping for a deep draught of cool, soothing tender coconut water.
The best things in life are usually fattening, expensive or illegal. Coconut water, thank goodness, comes with no strings attached. (Finally! A relationship that doesn’t drive you crazy.) Sold on the roadside, for one-third the cost of the cheapest coffee at a trendy café, it’s also astonishingly good for you — as people are slowly beginning to discover.
Of course, anyone who’s travelled on an Indian road knows the routine. Lean across the cart, piled high with green tender coconuts and place your order. In minutes, a coconut will be sliced across the top, pierced and handed over with a straw. Once you’ve finished drinking the subtly sweet, comfortingly familiar, cool juice within, it’s hacked open so you can scoop out the supple, translucent flesh, using a big coconut chip as a spoon.
Vigorous promotion
Now the Coconut Development Board is adding their muscle, to promote the drink along with the farmers and vendors. Their campaign, to promote the virtues of tender coconut water, aims to get everyone drinking more of it this summer. A recent rally at the Chennai Citi Centre mall, organised by Hello FM 106.4 in conjunction with the Coconut Development Board (CDB), tender coconut was promoted enthusiastically with pamphlets, T-shirts and games. The CDB, established under the Ministry of Agriculture in 1981, promotes the country’s cultivation and coconut industry, focusing on increasing productivity and sales.
They’re focussing on aggressive marketing, in a bid to convince young Indians, still hung up on ‘trendy’ aerated drinks that coconut water isn’t some fuddy duddy beverage meant for grandaunts and invalids.
K. V. Subramanian, Director of the CDB, waxes eloquent about the drink. Stating that Tamil Nadu accounts for 25 per cent of the coconut cultivation, after Kerala, he says they now have to concentrate on convincing the state to consume more coconut. Unfortunately, most people still associate the aroma of coconut oil with hair oil rather than flavoursome food. Hair oil, however, is just one of the by products of Kerala’s most prominent tree. It also produces coconut cream, coconut milk, spray dried coconut milk powder, tender coconut water, shell charcoal, coconut water based vinegar and coir.
Tender and nutritious
“It’s a natural healthy fruit drink,” says Mr. Subramanian, adding, “In World War Two coconut water was injected into solidiers’ bodies. Like glucose. It’s also a good blood plasma substitute.”
A. Azeem is one of the many people who have seen the potential of coconut water as a beverage, with its astonishingly low calorie count and luxurious flavour. Since it’s not practical to transport and market in its natural form, Azeem bottles the water with a minimum of preservatives and sells it as ‘Adas TENCO’.
He buys tender coconut from about 240 farmers to process in his Vellore plant. Most of what he produces is exported, mainly to the UAE and the Caribbean Islands, but he’s now also introduced the drink in India. It’s available at supermarkets and other retail outlets.
While the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka also grow coconuts, Mr. Subramanian beams that Indian coconuts put up a spirited fight. “India is fourth only in export,” he says, “In quality we are first.”
Not too surprising if you take into account the fact that India’s been in the business of growing coconuts for 3000 years now. Currently the crop is grown in 1.91 million hectares with an annual production of nearly 13,000 million nuts, according to CDB figures.
Now all they have to do is make drinking coconut water trendy. They seem to have the right idea. While the recent rally preached to the hipsters, pushing pamphlets extolling the coconut’s virtues into their hands, the board’s also organising a coconut festival in Thiruvananthapuram that includes everything from weighty lectures such as on the “Acceleration of value addition of coconut” to a ‘coconut tree climbing competition’ open to two participants from each state.
Now, you don’t have to clamber up a tree, sickle in hand every time you feel like having a drink. But if you could, just imagine how popular you could become in the new, enlightened cocktail circuit.
SHONALI MUTHALALY
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