Coconut Water Trio
I remember the days when the only place you could buy coconut water was the yoga studio, they only came in one size, and there was only one brand. Flash forward a few years and you can buy coconut water in your local grocery store or bodega, there are several brands, and a few different sizes. This is not to mention that coconut water now comes flavored with a host of different tropical fruits in addition to the now ever present super food acai. With all this new attention to a product I have come to love over the years I thought it important to sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly.
There are three brands of coconut water I can buy at my local grocery store – Zico, which is the first brand I ever encountered, Vita Coco, the second, and One, the new kid on the block. All these come in a myriad of flavors like pineapple, mango, and passion fruit; however, I want to get to the heart of the issue, so I picked up a container of each in the plain old unadulterated coconut water flavor. Whenever I’ve see any of these brands at a yoga studio or gym they are always priced between $2 and $2.50 and there has never been a difference in price between brands; however, at the grocery store there definitely is. The Zico was most expensive at $2.49, followed by Vita at $1.89, and One at $1.50. This could be very idiosyncratic to my grocery store, but something tells me that the older brands are trying to drive price up. The nutrition information and make up of all the coconut waters is pretty much comparable, boiling down to a gram of sugar more here and a gram less there. Personally, I prefer the packaging of Zico the best, but this is pretty subjective.
I did a blind tasting with a friend of mine and we both came up with the same answers. Vita