Coconut Water
 

As my wife will tell you, I ignore all her health advise when comes to foods she says I should be eating. For example, if I eat 2 or 3 salads in a month, that would be a lot. However, I found this article of interest since I've never heard of coconut water. No doubt my wife, daughter, and others have. Since I drink very little water thoughout the day I like to have a Gatorade now and then to restore whatever it is suppose to do. :) I just happened to read this article and wondered how many of you have tried coconut water or use it?

NHL - Hockey players' love affair with coconut water over sports drinks

Nothing like good old water, especially getting sucked out the well in the front yard. The source is from Sierra snow melt. Filtered with a Pura 3 stage: sediment, carbon and UVC to meet FDA sterile standards. Whole house.

I fell in love with coconut water from my trips to Singapore and Thailand. Nothing like being hot and thirsty, only to quench it with a street stand selling fresh coconut. They hack off the end of the iced coconuts and insert a straw. You can eat the meat if you want; it peels out like a mandarin orange. Delicious and satisfying.

Costco has some good stuff; works well in healthy shakes or smoothies.

Still can't beat the cost and ease of use of good old water. Low in calories too!

Coconut water beats soft drinks by a mile, and probably most or all energy drinks as well. But the health benefit claims have been widely exaggerated by the industry in the past and the FDA has cracked down on such advertising claims. So plain water is still a better option for most people. But if you like the taste, enjoy. Just avoid over-consuming...like drinking it all day long for a long time. You risk excess potassium levels in your blood which can lead to kidney failure and heart arrhythmia. I'll stick with unsweet iced tea, which probably has its own risks.

I love Crystal Light. Raspberry lemonade is my fave. :)

I tried coconut water and didn't like it at all. I drink water all day and even during the night as I have a bottle at the top of my pillows. The water at my Loveland house is delicious out of the faucet. The water at my California house is nasty and even a Brita filter doesn't help much. I drink Aqua Fina or Costco water there.

Natural deionized and softened spring well water can't beat it.
very very soft. aquarium store didn't believe when I tested so I brought them a sample.

We have Michigan well water and everyone from here thinks ours is great . . . not me, nor my mother, or even my wife once she tasted the NE Pennsylvania 'tap' water where I grew up!

Bottled water mostly. I hate sports drinks, too much sugar. I do use an additive in my water if I am exercising made by Herbalife which has all the required electrolytes and no sugar.

I've not tried it. I'm not much of a water fan except at the gym. In an attempt to drink less diet soda, I'll drink Crystal Light. Still has a sugar substitute, but no carbonation.

Aspartame is found in many "diet" food and drinks. Years ago I read up how it was metabolized in the body, looked at some issues with the Gulf War Syndrome and decided to eliminate it from my diet. I used to drink diet soda; no way, no more. (Nor regular soda either)

In the body, aspartame is broken down into phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and methanol.

Methanol can be toxic in high amounts, but the amounts that result from the breakdown of aspartame is lower than that found in many “natural” foods, such as many fruit juices.

Phenylalanine and aspartic acid are amino acids and are naturally present in many foods that contain protein. They do not cause health problems in most people. However people with the disease phenylketonuria (discussed in more detail later on) need to restrict their intake of phenylalanine, and so are usually counseled to avoid aspartame.

Higher temps can dramatically affect Nutrasweet (Aspartame) Many have thought the Gulf War Syndrome was, in part, caused by troops drinking extremely large quantities of sweetened beverages that had been exposed to very high temps in the desert.
Hot chocolate anyone?

Quote:
When aspartame in liquid is subjected to high temperatures, the breakdown of aspartame and the formation of large amounts of DKP (diketopiperazine) happens very quickly [Prudel, 1986]. In addition, Boehm [1984] and Bada [1987] showed that high temperatures can cause racemization of the free amino acids leading to significant amounts of unnatural D-type amino acids — much more than is produced through cooking normal, healthy foods. The health affects of large amounts of these D-type amino acids are not well known. In a statement provide to U.S. Senate hearings, Jeffrey Bada, Ph.D. [1987], had this to say about aspartame decomposition:

“Aspartame, a dipeptide containing the amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid, is prone to a number of decomposition/alteration reactions. Dominant are cyclization to the cyclic dipeptide or diketopiperazine [DKP] and stereochemical inversion (racemization) producing the unnatural D-stereoisomers of the amino acids. [...] In some instances, however, these reactions are very significant, and the reaction products which are produced are not well-studied as far as their nutritional/toxicological properties are concerned. Some examples where these reactions could be significant are in soft drinks exposed to warm temperatures for prolonged periods and in consumer misuse of aspartame such as in cooking or baking.”

In an article for the Wednesday Journal, Dr. Bada discusses some of his concerns relating to the chemical rearrangement of aspartame [Mullarkey, 1992]:

“The chemistry of aspartame is changed when boiled... There is internal rearrangement of its structure. The L-isomers of phenylalanine and aspartic acid change to unnatural D-isomers which are metabolized differently. How it is metabolized is anybody’s guess... Searle people tend to dismiss stereochemical inversion as unimportant. Chris Tschanz, director of aspartame clinical research, and Louis D. Stegnik, M.D., of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, visited me and admitted that nobody thought of looking at aspartame the way we did.”

In 1993, the FDA approved aspartame for use in tea beverages, baked goods and mixes, frostings and toppings [Mullarkey, 1994]. There are many aspartame-containing products on the market which are intended to be heated to high temperatures. Therefore, Dr. Bada’s comment of aspartame’s “misuse” in cooking or baking no longer applies—it is now a condoned use of aspartame.

It has been shown that aspartame can react with other food additives to form chemicals of unknown health consequence. Hussein showed that aspartame reacts with aldehydes which are commonly used flavoring compounds in sodas and chewing gum [Hussein, 1984]. Cha [1988] has shown that aspartame can react with vanillin in foods. These reactions are very important considerations. As an example of how additive reactions can cause the formation of toxic substances, in 1973 an experiment reported in the Journal of Food Science tested three different food additives on mice. None of the mice reacted negatively to the individual food additives. But when the additives were tested in pairs, the mice became ill. When all three food additives were tested at once, the mice died.

Aspartame-containing products which are ingested in the real-world are chemically very different than the 98-100% pure aspartame that is given in laboratory experiments. The large amount of breakdown products may play the most important role in aspartame’s negative health affects. Aspartame’s strong tendency to react with other food ingredients to form unique chemical compounds and the tendency of the free amino acids to racemize at high temperatures may also be important factors. The aspartame found in the real world is no longer the pure aspartame that was originally put into the food. It is a chemical “witch’s brew” of aspartame breakdown and reaction products.

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