A tall, warm cup of milk...coconut milk.

I love milk. Especially whole milk. It's fully of creamy fatty goodness (and is actually much better for you than skim, but that's for another post). However, once milk is pasteurized, it looses the enzymes that naturally occur with it, making it harder for your gut to break down the lactose sugars into the monosaccharides glucose and galactose. If there is any damage in your gut, the job gets even harder, because you may simply not be able to produce enough enzymes to break down those sugars. This means that certain bacteria in your gut have a feeding frenzy, producing all the lovely symptoms that we associate with lactose intolerance. For this reason, milk is typically verboten to those of us on GAPS who already have a damaged gut, and unless you can source some raw milk, you'd better find an acceptable alternative.

In my toddler's case, he wouldn't even drink cow milk to begin with - perhaps it was a defense mechanism from his already damaged gut. However, I wanted him to be drinking some kind of milk, so we explored the "alternative" milks before settling on coconut milk. And he would drink it - as long as it was fully sweetened and flavored. So Delicious vanilla was his daily milk beverage and he loved it enough that I silenced any nagging doubts about fat content and additives. Then we went Paleo as a family and I started using canned coconut milk for us as well.

Now don't get me wrong, coconut milk is pretty awesome stuff. It's fully of medium chain tryglicerides (MCT) which help fight cholesterol and inflammation, support gut health, and encourage weight loss. And who would want to eat Thai green currry without tons of it? However, most of our store bought versions tend to be less than ideal. If you can find a coconut milk with only coconut and water as ingredients, stored in a non-reactive container, then you're doing great. Unfortunately, you tend to run into a couple issues with store versions of coconut milk.

For the fresh milks, the biggie is carageenan. Carageenan is used to thicken coconut milk so that it has a texture closer to cream. You find carageenan in all sorts of other things like heavy cream and ice cream. On first blush, it doesn't sound so bad, since it is naturally derived from seaweed; however, research indicates that it aggravates intestinal inflammation and GI issues. Read this report for more info. So those cartons of coconut milk? Not so great for someone who is already experiencing digestive distress.

The cans have their own set of issues, BPA and other thickener gums foremost among them. Chris Kessler does an excellent summary of it here. There are a few varieties that don't suffer from these issues but they can be trickier to find at your convenient grocery store. Also, if you suffer from fructose malabsorption, coconut milk can be an issue for you.

If you would like to avoid all these pitfalls by just making your own, it is surprisingly easy, and cheaper, to boot. All you need is a blender, some water, and some cheesecloth or a nut milk bag. Then you just need to obtain some coconut. While you could crack and peel the coconut yourself, then shred it, and then make milk from it, that sounds a little too time consuming for me. I prefer to use dried, shredded coconut. I avoid sulfured coconut when possible. Fortunately, my local health food store sells organic unsulfured shredded coconut for about $3.29/lb, which will make me at least a gallon of coconut milk, and if I ordered in bulk from a co-op like Azure, I could probably get it far cheaper. You can make the coconut milk as rich or thin as you like by how much water you add - I prefer a richer milk so I use:

2 cups shredded coconut
3.5 cups filtered water

Add the ingredients to the blender:

Blend for one to a few minutes:

Pour into a strainer lined with cheesecloth, over a bowl or alternately, pour through a nut milk bag. After it sits for several minutes, the coconut solids will begin to pull away from the sides and form a cake:

Gather up the edges of your cheesecloth and squeeze all the excess liquid out of the coconut pulp:

Once you are finished, it should feel very dry and crumbly. You can, if you are feeling particularly industrious, go on to dry these solids in a food dehydrator and use them for coconut flour.

Finally, you have the finished warm coconut milk. My toddler, who wouldn't touch the unsweetened store bought carton of coconut milk, will happily down a glass of this if I let him.

We primarily use coconut milk for making dairy free kefir for my daughter, who is dairy sensitive (though healing) and for using in coffee or chai tea. I also occasionally make popsicles for my son. However you use it, it is tasty stuff, and GAPS legal. Enjoy!