Coconuts get sweeter

MANILA, Philippines - In the business community, Harry Liu is known as a veteran stockbroker, a respected stock market executive regularly sought by business reporters, and a former chairman of the Philippine Stock Exchange.

But for over a year, Liu has been in a business where you won’t expect to find a seasoned stockbroker. His lesser known company, Los Ricos Compania Corporation (the other being Summit Securities Inc.), manufactures what Liu calls “coco sugar”, under the brand name Coco Natura.

It tastes almost like sugar, looks like brown sugar, but it’s not sugar. It comes from the sap of coconut trees, the same source of coconut vinegar and coconut wine, locally known as tuba.

What is amazing about Coco Natura is that it’s not a technological discovery that came from a laboratory. Farmers in Cagayan de Oro have been making coco sugar for years but only for their own consumption. They had no idea about its business potential.

Liu’s business partner, Mark Peralta, discovered it and contacted Liu’s son, Gerard, who had then just left his job as a vice president in Bank of America. He returned to Manila after spending a decade because he wanted to do something for the motherland. It was a trait that he inherited from his father, Harry, who has been in the local stock market in the 1960s.

“Many of my relatives live abroad but I chose to stay,” says the elder Liu, who has been in the stock market business since the 1960s, when trading was done with a huge blackboard, chalk, erasers and barkers.

When Gerard came back, just before the recession in the United States hit, the elder Liu encouraged his son to do something for the country.

When Gerard and Peralta discovered coco sugar’s low glycemic index – its sweetness level – to be at 35 (sugar is at 50), they knew that they have found an all-natural sweet alternative to artificial sweeteners for diabetics. All that was needed was to raise the product’s quality by building a factory and package it according to world-class standards. Gerard, who would become the general manager of Los Ricos, approached his father for financial backing.

Harry Liu is his product’s number one customer not because he wants to. He needs to because he is diabetic. “Ever since I was diagnosed with diabetes, I’ve been using artificial sweeteners.” But he later became concerned about long-term toxicity, and he didn’t like the aftertaste.

Then came coco sugar. For Liu and millions of other diabetics, coco sugar is more than a just a sweet alternative – it is a sweet taste of freedom that non-diabetics take for granted, such as the everyday pleasure of drinking coffee or eating cookies. Liu now enjoys cakes and pastries made by his wife, who is an accomplished baker.

“Why go for artificial sweeteners when you can have something that’s all natural,” he says. Liu brings packets of Coco Natura wherever he goes.

For the past years, diabetics have relied on artificial sweeteners until information about aspertame’s toxicity became known. There is also that aftertaste. Coco Natura has a hint of coconut but has no aftertaste, a plus for diabetics.

Nearly five percent of Filipinos have diabetes but the actual figure may be double, according to Gerard Liu, citing official figures. An estimated five percent of the population may be unaware that they have diabetes or that they are future diabetics.

For health buffs, coco sugar is a healthy alternative to real sugar. For one, there is that chemical process used to refine sugar. Two, too much sugar is bad for you and is a major contributor to obesity.

What also makes Harry and Gerard Liu excited like about Coco Natura is that it’s a product that can boost the domestic economy and put the Philippines on the world map. Los Ricos (www.coconaturasugar.com) currently ships Coco Natura to Japan, the United States, Canada and Italy. Coco Natura comes in 250-gram boxes containing 50 sachets for people on the go, and in bags of 250 and 1000 grams.

Here in the Philippines, Coco Natura is in major supermarkets. However, Filipinos haven’t yet acquired a taste for coco sugar because health awareness is relatively low compared to that in other countries. But more and more Filipinos have been becoming health conscious, says Harry and Gerard Liu.

Betting on the market, they say that once the local demand picks up, they can bring down the cost production and, eventually, Coco Natura’s price tag. “Right now, we just have to create awareness that there is a natural and healthy alternative to artificial sweeteners,” says Gerard. “The other good thing here is that it’s made in the Philippines.”

For the Lius, it’s nothing but sweet joy – and about using your coconut.