Orange Juice not all that Pure
Breakfast Drink Rarely Fresh and Natural
In the early years of the last century there was an overproduction of citrus fruit in California. According to thebestofrawfood.com citrus farmers were confronted with financial troubles: “The OJ growers didn’t know what to do with the fruit and didn’t see another option but to destroy 30 percent of its trees. At that time, people didn’t have a fridge yet, so if they used the crop for juicing, the juice would only last for a day before it would start to rot.”
Pasteurization Saves the Orange Juice Industry
With pasteurization and the growth of a national rail network, U.S. citrus producers were able to ship fresh orange juice to big cities before it started to go bad.
In 1948, frozen orange concentrate was introduced into the market and the juice industry took off. Nielsen, the market research firm, says that more than 2.3 billion litres of OJ are sold each year in the U.S. alone.
Processing Orange Juice is Complex
In her 2009 book, “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice,” Alissa Hamilton says the production of orange juice has become highly mechanized and involves the input of chemists and engineers.
Interviewed on February 22, 2009 by Boston Globe writer Devra First, Ms. Hamilton said, “In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavour-providing chemicals, which are volatile.” After this processing, the juice essentially tastes like water.
The juice makers then call on the expertise of flavour and fragrance companies, the same ones that create perfume, to bring back the orange taste. So-called flavour packs are created through re-engineering; “they’re technically made from orange-derived substances, essence, and oils,” says Ms. Hamilton. “Flavour companies break down the essence and oils into individual chemicals and recombine them.”
In an interview with The New Yorker (May 14, 2009) she noted: “Ethyl butyrate is one of the chemicals found in high concentrations in the flavour packs added to orange juice sold in North American markets, because flavour engineers have discovered that it imparts a fragrance that Americans like, and associate with a freshly squeezed orange.”
Ms. Hamilton adds that “To call it (orange juice) natural at this point is a real stretch.”
Florida’s Orange Groves Disappearing
The U.S. Department of Agriculture pegged the 2006/07 Florida orange crop at 135 million boxes, the smallest crop in 17 years. About 90 percent of that crop goes to the orange juice market.
In her book, Ms. Hamilton says the decline in fruit production in the Sunshine State is, in part, due to the loss of groves to condominium construction but also to imports. She told The Boston Globe: “Most concentrate is now from Brazil. Shipping it is relatively easy…The orange growing is moving to Brazil, which grows the most oranges for juice by far. Land is cheaper, and environmental regulations are almost nonexistent.”
So, the heavily marketed "squeezed from fresh oranges" OJ may not be from Florida and it's certainly not fresh.
Real Fresh Orange Juice Package.
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