About Coconuts
Known as the "tree of life," the coconut palm is one of the most important agricultural crops of the
Philippines. It yields timber; food; fermented and unfermented drink; alcohol; vinegar;
thatching material; splints; strips and fiber for making baskets, mates, rope, hats,
brushes, brooms, and other articles; fuel; caulking material; utensils for household use,
such as cups, bowls, spoons, and the like; oil for food, cooking, illumination, for making
soap, substitutes for butter and lard, ointments; and oil for cake for feeding domestic
animals and for fertilizer.
Coconut Drinks
Coconut Milk
Coconut milk is made from the expressed juice of grated coconut.
Tuba is common in coconut-growing areas. Gatherers climb nutless trees twice a day to
collect the sap emanating from the lopped-off, growing tip of the tree in bamboo tubes.
The fresh sap is sweet and nonalcoholic; allowed to ferment, it becomes sour and mildly
alcoholic and is sometimes dyed with mangrove bark.
Lambanog
Distilled tuba, often 80 proof or above. Much like "Kentucky moonshine."
Coconut Vinegar
Coconut vinegar is made from fermenting the water that is found inside the coconut
shell.
Buko Juice
"Buko" is the Philippine term for "young coconut." Coconuts are
harvested before maturity, and the grated buko is soaked in the water of the
young coconut to make buko juice.
Coconut Foods
Nata de Coco
Nata de coco is fermented coconut meat that is made into sweets and desserts.
Macapuno
Macapuno is a Philippine variety of the coconut palm that does not contain water inside
the coconut shell. The "meat" of the coconut is a soft jelly-like substance that
is used in popular Filipino sweets
Macaroons
Macaroons are a kind of cookie made from grated coconut.
"Buko" is the Philippine term for "young coconut. " The coconuts
are harvested before maturity, and then the meat is sliced into strips and put into a pie
crust.
A kind of soup made from coconut milk, usually with vegetables.
Sinukmani
"Sticky rice." Made from "sweet rice" (malagkit), brown sugar, and
coconut milk.
Espasol
Also a rice dessert made from sweet rice, coconut milk and brown sugar, but with espasol the rice is
roasted rather than boiled.
Medicinal Uses
The parts of the coconut palm that are used in medicine are the roots, the bark, the
"bloom" of the leaf, the cabbage, the flowers, and the fruit (husk, shell,
water, endosperm, oil.)
The roots are astringent and used for dysentery and other intestinal complaints. They
are also antiscorbutic and diuretic.
The bark is used in some places for curing toothaches and earaches. The ash of the bark
is sometimes sued as a dentifrice and as antiseptic, and sometimes prescribed in scabies.
The cabbage, or ubod, makes an excellent salad, and is used in the Philippines in
native pickles (achara), and is eaten in gulay, lumpia, etc. It is nourishing and
digestive, and reported to be cooling and diuretic.
The flowers are astringent, and used sometimes in the treatment of diabetes, dysentery,
leprosy, and urinary discharges.
The fibers of the trunk are recommended as a diuretic, and used sometimes in the
treatment of tapeworm and inflammation of the throat.
The shell of the coconut gives an empyreumatic product used generally in toothache
caused by caries, and in cutaneous disease. It is obtained by burning the endocarp in a
receptacle and condensing in another the volatile products which separate.
The coconut water, when fresh, is astringent, and slightly acidic. Later on the water
loses its astringency and consists of 95 percent water, holding in solution proteids,
sugars, and salts. It is used as a diuretic. It is also said to be cooling in urinary
disorders. It is also reported to be anthelmintic.
The tuba, or toddy, from the sap, is stimulating and acts as a mild laxative. It is
also reported to be a refrigerant and diuretic.
The coconut milk, which is the product of the expressed juice of the grated endosperm,
was popular during World War II and was used as a substitute for cow's milk. Recent research shows that lauric acid is present, which is also
present in human mother's milk. The milk is reported to be refrigerant, nutrient,
aperient, diuretic, laxative, and anthelmintic.
The oil from coconuts is used much in the Philippines as a vehicle for liniments in
skin medicines and for other external applications. It is also used for strengthening the
hair, and is used with "gogo"
to make a shampoo.
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