Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Coconut Juice (Singapore)

Coconut juice: what's actually in it?

First, a labelling trap this page is built around: “coconut water”, “coconut juice” and “coconut milk” are three different things, and the front of the pack does not always make the difference obvious.

• Coconut water is the clear liquid inside a young coconut. A 100% coconut water should list nothing else.
• Coconut juice / coconut juice drink is usually coconut water (or coconut juice) diluted with water, with pulp and added sugar and a preservative. It is a formulated drink, not just coconut water in a can.
• Coconut milk is pressed from the flesh of a mature coconut. It is a cooking ingredient (and, in drink form, a plant-based milk), with fat — a different product from coconut water entirely. This page keeps all three in separate, labelled sections and never merges them.

This page does not give a health score. It shows the ingredient list as printed, flags added sugar and the sulphite preservative that appears in several coconut juice drinks, and explains the jargon in plain English.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Most 100% coconut waters really are one ingredient — UFC Refresh, Cocomax Original, IF, Raw C Straight Up and others checked out as coconut water only. What differs is origin, treatment (pasteurised, HPP raw, or UHT/sterilised) and whether a fruit juice is blended in.
• “100%” on the front does not always mean one ingredient. Coco Life's FairPrice list is “Coconut Water, Natural fruit sugar” — fruit sugar is still a second, sweetening ingredient, even though the product is marketed as 100% coconut water. Read the list, not the front.
• Coconut juice drinks are a different category. Ice Cool Young Coconut Juice with Pulp and Yeo's Coconut Juice Drink both add water, sugar and sodium metabisulphite (E223, a sulphite preservative). If you want plain coconut water, these are not it.
• Flavoured coconut waters sit in between. Cocomax Lychee is 98% coconut water + 2% lychee juice; Raw C Watermelon and Pineapple add a small percentage of fruit juice plus natural flavour and colour. No added sugar is claimed for the Raw C infusions — check the pack, because “natural flavour” and “natural colour” are still listed ingredients.
• Coconut milk is where stabilisers appear. Ayam's Premium is a single ingredient (fresh coconut kernel extract) on FairPrice, but Ayam's regular and Trim milks and the UFC Velvet drink add guar gum, xanthan gum, gellan gum or similar to keep the milk from separating. That is normal for coconut milk; it is still worth knowing which can is plain extract and which is stabilised.
• Coconut water is not the same as an isotonic sports drink, even though some brands call it “nature's sports drink”. It is listed separately from the isotonic-drinks page for that reason.

At a glance — coconut water (plain)

At a glance — flavoured coconut water & coconut juice drinks

At a glance — coconut milk (cooking & drinking)

Prices are deliberately not shown here: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Coconut water — plain

Coconut water — flavoured / blended

Coconut juice drinks — water, sugar and a sulphite preservative

These are the cans most often confused with coconut water. Both add water as a major ingredient, both add sugar, and both use sodium metabisulphite (E223) as a preservative — the sulphite flag to watch if you are sulphite-sensitive.

Coconut milk — cooking cans and drinking milks (kept separate from coconut water)

Coconut milk is pressed from mature coconut flesh, so it contains fat and separates on standing — which is why stabilisers are common. “Light”/“Trim” means diluted with water, not a different coconut.

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked:

• Yeo's Packet Drink — 100% Natural Coconut Water (4 × 330ml and 1L) — listed at FairPrice; distinct from the Yeo's Coconut Juice Drink panelled above. No verbatim ingredient section retrieved here. (Its Nutri-Grade is B in secondary listings — a grade, not a list.)
• Vita Coco — Pressed, flavoured variants — sold in Singapore via Shopee/Lazada/RedMart and import sellers. Pressed adds coconut purée/cream + gellan gum per overseas listings, but no SG-facing ingredient section was verified for the Pressed or flavoured variants, and formulations differ by market. (The Original is now panelled above, flagged.)
• Cocobella Straight Up Coconut Water — listed at FairPrice in secondary coverage; no verbatim ingredient section retrieved here.
• Cocoloco Organic Coconut Water (270ml, Little Farms / Cold Storage / RedMart) and Cocoloco Organic Coconut Water with Dark Chocolate (Little Farms listing) — brand states it adds “absolutely nothing” to its coconut water, but no verbatim ingredient list was retrieved for either variant in this pass. The dark-chocolate variant in particular needs a pack check, as it is unlikely to be plain coconut water.
• Kara UHT Coconut Milk / Coconut Cream / Kara Coco drink — sold at FairPrice. Secondary listings give e.g. coconut milk 99.9% + stabilisers (xanthan, guar, carrageenan) for the cream, but no FairPrice SG ingredient section was verified here.
• Chaokoh Coconut Milk, FairPrice Natural Coconut Cream, Heng Guan fresh coconut milk — seen in FairPrice/Singapore listings; no verbatim lists verified here.
• Cocoxim 100% Organic Coconut Water, Zico Coconut Water — seen in Singapore coverage/listings; no verbatim SG ingredient section verified here.
• Ice Cool Roasted Young Coconut Juice with Pulp (FairPrice variant) — listed at FairPrice; panelled above is the standard with-pulp juice drink, not this roasted variant's own list.
• UFC Velvet Dairy Free Coconut Milk — Original, UFC Velvet Chocolate — listed at FairPrice; only the Unsweetened variant was verified above.
• Giant / Sheng Siong / Cold Storage / Donki / Mustafa / Meidi-Ya / Le Petit Depot own coconut ranges — no additional coconut water/juice/milk brands with verifiable lists were found from those channels in this pass beyond those panelled; an in-store check would be needed to close this gap (see research notes).

Nutrition — what the numbers say

Plain coconut water, flavoured coconut water, coconut juice drinks and coconut milk are kept in one table here but are not like-for-like categories — note the Basis column, and in particular that coconut-milk rows are per 100 ml of the canned/drinking product, not of coconut water. Across the per-100 ml rows, sugars run from 1.5 g (Ayam Trim) to 4.4 g (UFC Refresh and Cocomax Original), and sodium from 7.9 mg (Cocomax Original, retailer listing) to 28 mg (UFC Twist). The Yeo's per-serving row (13 g sugars, 72 mg sodium per 300 ml serving) is not part of that per-100 ml range. No official Singapore Nutri-Grade letter was found printed on any pack/listing in this pass, so none is quoted for any drink on this page.

Salt = sodium × 2.5. Sodium is shown as printed; the salt equivalent is in brackets. Sodium is never presented as salt. Figures below are total sugars as printed on Singapore-style packs, not added sugars — the ingredient list on this page remains the evidence for added sugar versus naturally occurring sugars. No Nutri-Grade letter is quoted unless it was found printed on the pack or listing; none is assigned here, and no health score or verdict is given.

— means not stated in the source found for that row, not zero. Per-serving rows are quoted exactly as printed and are not converted to per 100 g/ml. Where sources conflict, the conflict is flagged in the notes below and in the research notes, not silently resolved.

Conflicts and flags. UFC Refresh: a second retailer listing gives per 100 ml energy 25 kcal, carbohydrate 6 g, sugars 3.5 g, sodium 20 mg — different sugars/carbohydrate from the row above; seasonal variation is also noted on one retailer page. Cocomax Original: the Singapore Open Food Facts listing gives sugars 4.52 g and sodium 12 mg per 100 ml, versus the retailer row above (4.4 g, 7.9 mg). Ayam Premium: the 270 ml can panel (fat 24.3 g, saturated fat 21.6 g, sugars 1.6 g) and the 200 ml panel (fat 20.6 g, sugars 2.7 g) are different pack sizes and are kept as separate rows, consistent with the conflicting-lists note in the ingredient section. All sugars here are total sugars as printed; plain coconut water sugars are naturally occurring, while the juice-drink and Twist rows contain added sugar per their ingredient lists — the ingredient list, not the sugars number, is the evidence for that distinction. No Nutri-Grade letter is quoted: none was found printed in this pass.

Seen but not verified (nutrition) — do not use figures for these until checked from the pack:

• IF Local Sensation 100% Coconut Water — no nutrition panel verified.
• Raw C Pure Natural Coconut Water — Straight Up (Little Farms) — no nutrition panel verified.
• Coco Life Coconut Packet Water — no nutrition panel verified.
• Ice Cool 100% Coconut Water (1L) — no nutrition panel verified.
• FairPrice 100% Natural Coconut Water (house brand) — no nutrition panel verified from the pack (secondary coverage gives about 18 kcal per 100 ml only).
• Cocomax 100% Coconut Bottle Water with Lychee — no nutrition panel verified for this flavour; do not borrow the Original row.
• Raw C Coconut Water Infused with Watermelon / Pineapple (Little Farms) — no nutrition panels verified for either flavour.
• Ice Cool Young Coconut Juice Drink with Pulp — no verified (non-estimated) nutrition panel found; an Open Food Facts listing gives only estimated figures and is not used.
• UFC Velvet Coconut Milk — Unsweetened (drinking milk) — no nutrition panel verified.
• MilkLAB Coconut Milk — Plant-Based Beverage For Coffee — no nutrition panel verified.

How to read a coconut label — the jargon, in plain English

Coconut water vs coconut juice vs coconut milk

Water = clear liquid from a young coconut. Juice/juice drink = usually that liquid diluted with water, sweetened, with pulp and a preservative. Milk = pressed from mature coconut flesh, contains fat, used for cooking or as a plant milk. If the pack just says “coconut” without one of these words, read the ingredient list to find out which one it is.

From concentrate / not from concentrate

“From concentrate” means the water was evaporated for shipping and water added back later. “Not from concentrate” / “never from concentrate” means the liquid was packed as pressed. It is a processing difference, not an extra ingredient.

Natural fruit sugar / coconut sugar / raw sugar

All are sweetening ingredients. “Natural” does not mean “not added”: if sugar in any of these forms appears in the list, the product has added sweetness beyond what the coconut itself provides.

Sodium metabisulphite / metabisulfite (E223)

A sulphite preservative used to keep colour and stop spoilage in coconut juice drinks. It is the reason these drinks keep longer than plain coconut water — and the allergen-style flag to watch for sulphite sensitivity. Plain 100% coconut waters on this page do not list it.

Gellan gum, guar gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan

Thickeners/stabilisers that stop coconut milk (and the Coconut Twist drink) from separating into cream and water. They are not sweeteners and not preservatives; their presence marks a formulated/stabilised product rather than plain pressed coconut.

Coconut kernel extract

The pressed flesh extract used for canned coconut milk. A percentage (e.g. 74%, 63%, 48%) tells you how diluted that extract is with water — lower percentage, lighter milk.

HPP (high pressure processing)

A cold pressure treatment used by Cocoloco instead of heat pasteurisation, claimed to keep the water raw. Again, a processing claim, not an ingredient — and it does not by itself prove the ingredient list is one item long.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a hydration ranking. Coconut water's natural electrolytes are the brands' descriptions, quoted as such.
• Not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete. Yeo's 100% Natural — one of the most-bought coconut waters in Singapore — is deliberately left unpanelled until its ingredient section is verified, rather than filled in from descriptions. The FairPrice house brand is now panelled but only as described-only, pending a pack check; Vita Coco Original is panelled flagged, pending an SG pack check; the Pressed/flavoured Vita Coco variants, Cocoloco and Kara remain unpanelled.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: NTUC FairPrice product pages (ingredient sections for Cocomax Lychee, Coco Life, UFC Coconut Twist, Ayam Premium, MilkLAB Coconut); Little Farms product pages (Raw C Straight Up, Watermelon, Pineapple; Hippie kombucha cross-check for the coconut page's Little Farms channel check); Open Food Facts Singapore listings for UFC Refresh, Cocomax Original, IF, Ice Cool and Yeo's Coconut Juice Drink, cross-checked against retailer listings where both were available; Ayam Brand Singapore/Malaysia brand sites; Amazon Singapore for UFC Velvet Unsweetened. Re-audit 5 Nov 2026 added: secondary coverage (Try and Review; Her World) for FairPrice 100% Natural Coconut Water (described-only panel); Desertcart SG and British Essentials SG listings for Vita Coco Original with its nutrition panel; confirmation that Coco Life and UFC Coconut Twist were already panelled from FairPrice sections (no change). Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Where a full pack list could not be verified, the page says so instead of filling the gap. Open Food Facts is a community database: its listings are useful for cross-checking, but the pack and the retailer's ingredient section take precedence if they disagree.