Genuine Coconut is truly a genius – they bring the best out of coconuts by doing nothing!

It’s all about coconut water.

Coconut water is the ‘dew from the heavens’.

Not only is it packed with essential electrolytes and rich nutrients, it is the ‘fluid of life’ that can enable cell repair and regeneration.

It contains cytokinins – a compound consisting of kinetin, kinetin riboside, and zeatin – that have “biomedical effects on mammalian cells (injected in vitro) with anti-cancer, anti-oxidative, anti-aging, cardioprotective, and DNA-repairing functions”– that makes coconut water a biostimulant and an anti-cancer agent according to Estévez (2021).

As desirable as it is, however, this anti-cancer agent can lose its biostimulant potency the moment coconut water is commercialized.  

Most of the commercialization process involves processing and pasteurization – to turn bioavailable fluid into shelf-stable products. And that usually means one thing – to kill the rawness of food.

Indeed, most of the coconut water we drink out of a bottle has lost its rawness – the way nature intends it to be. The problem is so prevalent that it becomes a bold statement for any brand to even dare to claim that their coconut water is raw.

And that’s where Genuine Coconut steps in.

The rawness of Genuine Coconut

Genuine Coconut offers 100% raw, organic NAM HOM virgin coconut water in its original coconut shell sourced directly from Thailand.

No additives, no chemicals, no processing, no pasteurization, and no high pressures.

But 100% raw, 100% wholesome, and 100% natural.

Genuine Coconut is truly a genius – they bring the best out of coconuts without doing anything!

They added nothing, altered nothing, and extracted nothing.

In trusting that nature knows better, they simply let nature takes over.

All that they do is to protect and preserve the rawness of coconut water while making the rawness accessible to customers.

In doing so, they develop a patented, easy-opening system that can enable customers to drink raw coconut water right out of coconut without using any heavy tools.

And that’s the genius of Genuine Coconut – they don’t work against nature but work with it.

With that, they take a free ride on a peak-quality product that only nature can offer.

And that leads to our discussion on food integrity.

Food integrity

Food integrity is an umbrella concept. It covers every single aspect of the entire process of food sourcing, processing, handling, and distribution. From Eliott (2014) to Alrobaish et al (2021), various scholars and institutions have provided their own definitions of this concept. Regardless of how they look at this concept, the core takeaway has always been that: food integrity should first and foremost be about the wholeness of the food. To Elliott (2014), the wholeness means the nature of the food has not been altered or modified; to Ali and his colleagues (2017), the wholeness means raw material integrity; to Alrobaish and his colleagues (2021), the wholeness means ‘a food product to be intact’; and to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the wholeness means ‘the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished or in perfect condition.’

And yet the highest form of wholeness is to retain the state of rawness.

It’s in the state of rawness all essential nutrients reach their peak bioavailability.

As common-sense as this may sound, however, commercialized raw food is hardly obtainable.

Many raw foods are perishable and local. They are really not meant for long-distance shipping and prolonged shelf life.

That’s when technologies kick in.

Most of the companies use technologies to engineer raw foods … until they conform – to become transportable and nonperishable. That means to eradicate the bioavailability – the rawness of food.

Though concerning, that’s not without exceptions. There is always that one or two firms thinking out of the box – to go against the grain. They choose to not engineer the rawness of food, but to preserve it – to keep food alive.

Both types of firms compete in the same product category but differ in their value propositions.

For the former, the value proposition is about pleasure – the look, the taste, the aroma, the texture, the consistency, and the convenience.

For the latter, the value proposition is about nourishment.

They are different.

Being different, however, is not the issue here. The issue is, they are becoming mutually exclusive. Commercialization polarizes the two types of value propositions and makes them an either-or choice when customers really desire both.

It’s time for companies to reverse the polarization and bring them back together.

But how?

Well, that all depends on how companies prioritize them. What comes first and what second – pleasure or nourishment?

As we may all agree, food, first and foremost, is about nourishment – it has always been and will always be.

Pleasure comes only after that.

If we could all slow down and take time to appreciate foods as what they are, we might all come to the same conclusion that natural foods are naturally delightful. Even a chef knows no culinary skills can compensate for low-quality ingredients. Only the freshest and most natural ingredients can bring out the best a dish has to offer. A chef’s job is not to engineer the delightfulness of natural ingredients, but to complement them.

That’s what a great chef does, and that’s what companies should do as well in the food industry.  

After all, we have to admit that, it’s only after companies engineer food, that things start to get complicated.

The more they engineer, the further they drift away from what food is meant to be. 

And that’s not okay.

The good news, though, is that as more and more companies join the club in prioritizing pleasure over nourishment, the one who goes against the grain will profit from it. The crowd essentially singes out the loner – who is therefore destined to stand out.

Sometimes, a single voice is louder than a crowd, especially when the voice sticks to the truth……