It's a natural isotonic beverage, with the same level of electrolytic balance as we have in our blood. It's the fluid of life, so to speak. Most coconut water is still consumed fresh in tropical coastal areas - once exposed to air, the liquid rapidly loses most of its organoleptic and nutritional characteristics, and begins to ferment. But the production of coconut beverages, particularly as a byproduct of processing operations such as coconut cream processing and coconut dessication, has long interested food manufacturers.
Present processing has a drawback .
But thermal processing has a drawback - it eliminates not only the risk of bacteria, but some of coconut water's nutrients and almost all of its delicate flavour. This severely limits the product's marketability. They also processed coconut water with added sucrose and L-absorbic acid, to approximate the vitamin and energy content of major sports drinks. Finally, they called in a panel of tasters, who could detect no difference between fresh coconut water and what came out the other end of the FAO filtering laboratory. Late in 1997, FAO officially submitted the new process to patent offices in Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom.