Oi! POM Wonderful Coconut Is Anything But Wonderful!

The Good: Not bad for you?
The Bad: Expensive, Not nearly as healthy as other premium bottled juice products, Nothing superlative nutritionally, Tastes terrible.
The Basics: Managing to make pomegranate even less palatable, POM Coconut 100% Juice Blend thoroughly disappoints those who love coconut beverages!


Not very long ago, I reviewed my first POM Wonderful beverage, their new POM Mango (reviewed here!), and I received a few messages from people wondering why I had never reviewed anything from the company before. Sure, I had reviewed the Morgan Spurlock documentary Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (that’s here!), but after that, I was not inspired to pick up any POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice. The reason for that is exceptionally simple: I am not a huge believer in “super fruits:” individual fruits or fruit combinations that supposedly fix all manner of ailments. If simple fruits did such things, I figure it wouldn’t have taken hundreds of years to figure it out and/or the label on products made from “superfruits” would contain a lot more vitamin and nutrient information that could be measured and quantified by the FDA.

Oh, and pomegranates suck.

Pomegranate is a fad fruit that is just awful tasting, so I had no incentive at all to check out POM’s previous beverage line-up. But, with them expanding their line to things like POM Coconut, I felt much more of an incentive to explore some of their products. Sadly, POM Coconut did not bolster the company’s reputation with me!

Despite how cute the bottle was and my general enjoyment of Coconut juice (or coconut milk), I found the POM Coconut thoroughly unimpressive both by taste and nutrition. And, given the expense, I found it impossible to recommend.

Basics

POM is a fruit drink brand, trading on the properties of pomegranates. This is a fruit juice that is surprisingly light on nutrients. POM Coconut comes in a 12 fl. oz. plastic bottle that is curvy, smooth and squat that takes up an odd amount of space by volume. The #1 recyclable bottle is filled with the opaque rich purple liquid, which looks much like wine or grape juice. POM juice products is a comparatively new, trendy brand and the Coconut 100% Juice Blend is part of their new line released this very summer. Right off the bat, it felt pretty expensive at more than $2.50/bottle!

The 12 fl. oz. bottle gives consumers a full serving.

Ease Of Preparation

POM Coconut 100% Juice Blend is a liquid in the 12 fl. oz. bottle and is a ready-to-drink beverage. So, preparation is as easy as opening a plastic bottle. Coconut has a plastic cap that easily twists off and can be put back on in order to reseal it. It is important to note that this is supposed to be refrigerated, so quality of the beverage will degrade if it is left out at room temperature before or after the bottle is open. This has a pretty standard security seal ring around the lower half of the cap and informs the consumer as to whether the product has been opened by cracking off when the top is twisted.

Taste

The Coconut POM smells surprisingly strongly of coconut. In fact, even more than coconut water or coconut milk, this drink has an aroma that smells sweet, buttery and light like actual coconuts. Opening this bottle up, one gets a scent almost identical to a coconut scented candle, it is that delightfully aromatic.

Unfortunately, on the tongue, the POM Coconut is not nearly as flavorful. The initial flavor is a slightly sour fruit flavor, not distinctly pomegranate because the milkiness of the coconut flavor quickly cuts the sourness. Instead, this beverage is generically fruity, more like a cherry juice than a pomegranate beverage. The generically fruity flavor is cut then by a watery and sour flavor that lingers on the tongue for about twenty seconds. It is after that that the coconut flavor asserts itself and that assertion is more a hint in the aftertaste. This is not a strongly coconut flavored beverage by any stretch of the imagination.

The coconut aftertaste lasts for only about a minute before the aftertaste transitions into a generic sour flavor that lingers on the tongue until one puts anything else in their mouth.

Nutrition

As a healthy fruit juice, POM Coconut 100% Juice Drink is designed to fill in some of the nutritional gaps one might have in their diet, but this beverage falls woefully short of that. Nutritionally, POM Coconut is a fair option for those who are dieting or are trying to improve their health. Coconut is primarily composed of Coconut water from concentrate, pomegranate and pineapple juices from concentrate and “natural flavors.” It contains nothing bad, which might be why it expires so quickly. It is Vegan compliant, gluten-free, and soy-free, but not certified organic.

One serving of Coconut has 140 calories and no fat. While there are 33 grams of carbohydrates, the beverage has no cholesterol and no protein! There is a negligible 10 mg (less than 1% RDA) of sodium in each serving. Outside the 640mg Potassium, the only nutrients this drink has are 4% RDA of Calcium.

Storage/Clean-up

POM Coconut 100% Juice Blend comes in a plastic bottle and it keeps for only a few weeks. The bottle I bought at the beginning of July had an expiration date of September 7, 2013 (I consumed the one I bought well before that!).

This drink is a fruit product and an opaque purple. If this gets on clothes, it will absolutely stain them, especially light clothes. Consult a care guide for your clothes, though I suspect light clothes would need bleach to get this out. Still, the drink wipes off surfaces easily with a cloth, assuming they are impermeable.

Overall

POM Coconut 100% Juice Blend is not enough to bring anyone around to pomegranate and almost enough to sour one on coconut!

For other coconut products, please check out my reviews of:
Celestial Seasonings Sweet Coconut Thai tea
Coconut M&M’s
Coconut 3 Musketeers
Coconut Jelly Belly jelly beans
Coconut Jelly Belly Dips
Stash Coconut Mango Oolong tea
Dole 100% Juice Orange Peach Coconut
O.N.E. Active Cranberry Grapefruit Coconut Water
Graeter’s Coconut Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon Ice Cream

1.5/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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