The God’s fruit – Coconut- श्रीफल

• Shilpi Goel

 

Coconut has a special significance in Indian culture and traditions often addressed as “ Shriphal” when disarticulated, it is  SHRI ( Godess Lakshmi ) + PHAL ( Fruit ) thus it can said as “God’s fruit” in other words the fruit full of blessings.

Why is coconut considered so holy ?

Lifespan of a coconut tree is on average 70 years but in general 120 years. As per astrology, life span of a human is 120 years that is why Vimsodhari dasa ie Mahadasa of all 9 planets will take 120 years to get complete. Thus coconut tree gets equivalent to that of a human.

A coconut tree may consume any type of water from sweet ground water to salty sea water but the fruit which it bears always gives only sweet water. This is equivalent to that of life of an ascetic or a mother because only they give good things to their followers and children.

Benedictions of Coconut for health –

Its a common misbelief that fat is bad for you. For so many years people were taught to use low fat products and cut fat out of their diet as much as possible. Today that theory has been mostly disproved, and we’ve learned that sugar and the wrong fats are the culprits in today’s health crisis of obesity and diabetes.
Many people don’t know, that the fat in the coconut is very similar to the fats we find in human breast milk and it is easy for the body to turn it into energy which is why many baby formulae use coconut milk as a main ingredient. Thus, despite of fats, Coconut can help us control our weight and give us energy for the day.

One of the distinguishing characteristic of Coconut oil contains mainly medium-chain fatty acids, which don’t cause strain on the system because it does not require pancreatic enzymes or bile from the liver for digestion.

Moreover we can also use coconut oil daily to do oil pulling, to remove bad bacteria from the mouth.

Delights of Coconut in its different forms –

Coconut water

• Drink as is.
• Make a detox water by adding berries, orange wedges/peels to coconut water and plain water in equal quantity.

Coconut milk

• Add coconut milk to make smoothies, sauces or curries.
• Make hot cocoa with coconut milk and add a cinnamon stick for stirring
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Coconut creme

• Coconut crème can be used as a great garnishing and decorating ingredient as a plant-based substitute.
• Replace regular crème with coconut crème in curries, sauces and enjoy richer creamier flavor.

Coconut oil

• Ideal for sautéing, making sauces and for baking.
• It is greatly used as carrier oil in many of the ayurvedic remedies.
• It promotes healthy scalp and hair growth, thus excellent for hair health.
• It is excellent natural skin moisturizer hence it is very commonly used to massage newborn babies in India.
• It is also used to stop earache or nosebleed by adding 1-2 drops of lukewarm coconut oil to ear and nose.

 

Fresh coconut

• Sprinkle shredded fresh coconut on meat, fish stews, and curries at the end of cooking.
• Use it in making desserts and in baking.
• Sprinkle it over hot chocolate for a beautiful flavor and as garnish.
• Make a chutney by adding fresh coconut, green/Thai chili, ginger, garlic, cilantro, salt and lemon juice in a blender. Blend all of these. Add a tempering of mustard seeds, asafetida and curry leaves.

Dried coconut

• It is used in making curries, spice mixes and for special rubs.
• It can also be used a beautiful form of garnish in shredded form.
• In sweetened as well as in unsweetened shredded form it is very popular in desserts and in baking.

In the world of Soft Carbonated Drinks..

Be someone’s sweet Coconut water…