"Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fruit good for you. Did you know, for example, that it takes 6-8 medium sized apples to make just 1 cup of apple juice? You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. (I know I can barely eat one!) But you can casually throw back a cup of apple juice, and you would probably be willing to return for seconds. That’s why fruit juice is dangerous. It’s far too easy to consume far too much sugar."
This paragraph is, arguably, far more important than all the hysteria about flavor packs, but it's only partially correct. Fibre does help provide satiety but, in and of itself, it isn't what's good for you about eating whole fruit unless you simply aren't getting enough fibre and have issues with constipation. What fibre does do is reduce the rate at which we absorb sugar. Apple juice will give you a nice fast sugar high and then a low, much like candy. An apple will give you a gradual surge of energy for a while. If you're going to eat something sweet, it's far better for you if it comes combined with fibre.
So don't go searching for juice that doesn't use flavor packs. Don't buy a juicer and juice your own either, because you're still throwing away what separates fruit from candy. Don't mess around with fermenting juices and all that probiotic jazz. If you simply must drink your fruit, use a blender.
Having read the article I was left with the assumption that pretty much all commercial orange juice contained these "flavor packs". This does not seem to be the case: http://www.toxinless.com/orange-juice
Maybe don't buy your orange juice from subsidiaries of the Coca Cola company and Pepsico, as a starting point.
I maintain that toxinless.com page and usually buy the brands that claim to avoid flavor packs. It could be placebo, but I notice more flavor variation throughout the year with Costco and Whole Foods' brands, which I think supports their claims of using different sources of oranges throughout the seasons.
On its face, I find this difficult to believe because why would any company pay to add massive amounts of chemicals to something to give it a taste that it has naturally? The most important point in the article is that storage in the oxygen-less tanks deprives the juice of its flavor. No proof is provided of this assertion. When I follow the source link I get a similar article [1] that then is sourced to a similar one [2], neither of which has and proof, other than the author's assertion. So I tried to track down the original. I found this article [3] which links the original expose to Dr. Oz (whatever) and to a book, Squeezed: What you don’t know about Orange Juice, and an interview with the author [4], where she asserts that the stored orange juice is flavorless, but we don't know if that's really true or not. Did she taste it? Reading the organic juice's page it seems clear that any 'flavor packs', which are made from orange peel and oils, are added to standardize the taste, rather than creating the taste, which seems to be a far more reasonable suggestion, but hardly something to feel alarm about.
> any company pay to add massive amounts of chemicals to something to give it a taste that it has naturally?
Unless they plan on selling the juice just during harvest time, they need to store it. Try and store some juice you squeezed from oranges even in the refrigerator and see how long it will last and how it will taste. It will last some but not for 6 months.
Consistency. Tropicana tastes one way, others taste different. I don't know why you need any proof, products will change flavor after they are stored for a while.
> add massive amounts of chemicals to something to give it
I'll have to throw the "sauce, please" back at you here ;-) I don't see where in the article it says these flavor packs are massive. Flavor compounds if done right will not be massive. Have you ever added spices or vanilla to anything you cook or bake. How much of the total volume is it? It usually isn't much.
> No proof is provided of this assertion.
I think it is rather common sense that it would lose flavor, at best it would have a different / strange flavor.
> hardly something to feel alarm about.
Really, you don't have any idea why someone might be a slightly worried about this class of additives put into a popular food that gets to skirt by regulations based on "technical" language.
As I recall reconstituted and concentrated juices are supposed to have "Brix" ratings on the food labels.
To complicate the matter further, juices that are concentrated for preservation, handling and storage and reconstituted for consumption (labelled "juice from concentrate") should be diluted back to approximately the same solids level (designated as Brix or percent soluble solids) of the initial juice. The amount of add-back water can vary substantially even within a given fruit, so reasonable commercial standards are set (FDA, 1999)
Being Anti-GMO doesn't make someone on the wrong side of science.
The dangers of GMO from a economic perspective are worthy of worry on their own. If you haven't seen Food Inc, then I would recommend that as a starting point to learn how dangerous the monopolisation of the food industry can be to society. The farmers in Peru want to protect their existing biodiversity, something North America has lost thanks to Monsanto, where you cannot legally grow a heirloom corn crop without paying patent fees to monsanto because of the inevitable wind-born cross pollination, thereby violating monsanto patent rights.
I concede that it's very unlikely to taste the difference between a GMO/non-GMO tomato.
But are you okay with Montsanto's practices?
There's good science that basically explains that their business model is not doing the best for the planet or the people living in it. It is, indeed reducing bio-diversity as far as I know. Also, their practices are super shady, having lived in latam all my life, I saw the way they got into several countries there and it's disgusting.
One reason that people are against GMO is that they don't trust the system that makes GMO. The kind of labelling games pointed out in the article are one reason why.
From a purely scientific standpoint, I'm for GMO, but I have to admit that I don't really know what's in the industrial food I buy. Worse, it's in the food industry's best interest to obfuscate, and it would be foolish to think that the GMO industry is any different.
I know this article is trying to "scare me with science," but it actually makes me proud that science allows for orange juice year round. Fresh is always better than not fresh, but this is something we as a society should be proud of, not ashamed.
If it wasn't for labeling requirements this process wouldn't even exist. It normally wouldn't make sense to extract liquid from oranges, store it for a year, and then re-combine it with flavor and texture to create a beverage. But unless the liquid and all those byproducts actually come directly from oranges you can't call it "100% pure orange juice".
You could produce the exact same chemical result without this process a lot safer and cheaper but then you couldn't call it pure orange juice not from concentrate.
I don't know if fresh is always better. It is better at some things. I like freshly squeezed oranges at home but there have been several cases around the world where unpasteurised fresh orange juice has been the cause of salmonella infection.
Sometimes we trade taste and nutrition for convenience, safety, consistency and year round availability. I like freshly squeezed oranges off my orange tree but they don't grow all year round. I am mostly happy not to consume oranges out of season but that isn't really a basis for a sustainable industry and beverage companies have sensibly created a market for year round, consistent tasting juice products.
> but it actually makes me proud that science allows for orange juice year round.
I am not proud of regulatory environment that allows them to not have to list those ingridients on package and instead do what they do and still claim "Fresh", "Natural", "Not from Concentrate" (i.e. pasteurized) etc.
This is one of the little things that make me happy about the Netherlands: the local market chains sell lots of minimally industrialized products. Orange juice tastes fresh and will spoil in a couple of days. If you still don't trust it, there are machines where you can choose fruit and squeeze your own juice. And it's usually cheaper than the big-brand alternatives.
I've heard many times that ordering a freshly squeezed juice from those machines is not so safe, they need to clean them pretty often to prevent E. coli and other dangerous pathogens from spreading, and since the machines that are squeezing this juice are not kept in refrigirator while operating - spreading this pathogens becomes an easy task
> I’m not questioning the health or merit of added chemicals (“natural” or “synthetic”)
Oh good, I thought you were afraid of chemicals
>I’m questioning the health or merit of so-called foods that are so devoid of flavor or color that we have to add back in chemical flavorings and colors to make them palatable.
Wait what? I thought you weren't questioning the health or merit chemicals? People like orange juice (more specifically, not from concentrate), and the cheapest way to produce something that resembles that is to store them in oxygen-free vats and add back flavor packs. Who cares if chemicals were used to achieve that flavor?
> Haven’t you ever wondered why every glass of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice tastes the same, no matter where in the world you buy it or what time of year you’re drinking it in? Or maybe your brand of choice is Minute Maid or Simply Orange or Florida’s Natural. Either way, I can ask the same question. Why is the taste and flavor so consistent?
And then
> The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals
Another lesson is that if you're going to buy industrial food (and it's something we're all going to do sometimes since it's an efficient way to make convenient food available at scale), it's better to go with something that doesn't hide what it is.
It's one reason why I'm a fan of Soylent. I hope it starts a trend where we get we get honest industrial food instead of fake natural food. I'm not not at all convinced that their product is unique, but I hope it starts a trend, where manufacturers don't hide the fact that flavor and nutrition need to be designed in, and instead try to explain why the design they chose is the best design.
> I’m sure you’re careful to buy the kind that’s 100%
> juice and not made from concentrate. After all,
> that’s the healthier kind, right?
If you're going to drink sugar water, it's unlikely to make much difference if it came straight from an orange or from concentrate. It seems a bit like worrying about whether your cigarette papers were naturally bleached or not.
> flavor packs are made from orange by-products — even though
> these ‘by-products’ are so chemically manipulated that they
> hardly qualify as ‘by-products’ any more.
I would love to know what that actually means, other than being scare-quote-tastic. How does something stop qualifying as a by-product?
> Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor
> packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange
> juice, resemble nothing found in nature
The pork sausages I buy come exlusively from pigs, herbs, and onions, and yet they also "resemeble nothing found in nature", unless Big Feline has invented meat grinders while we weren't watching.
If the juice is based on the use of flavor packs, then it is, to some extent, "made from concentrate"; if it is labeled as "not from concentrate", then that is a flat out lie.
I suspect "concentrate" simply has a legal definition that excludes flavour packs - in fact, doesn't the article say as much? The tricky thing about labeling is that there's obviously a line and the level of detail required will vary according to the beholder. I suspect there are far worse offenders in the food industry and, as the article implies, drinking fruit juice anyway isn't automatically a 'healthy' option; the concentrate/non-/flavour-pack distinction is probably relatively insignificant.
The law allows food manufacturers and stores to lie about the food. Much of the meat, especially poultry, for sale is labeled as "fresh" or explicitly "never frozen", when it has been frozen rock-hard. There is an arbitrary temperature that the bird must be kept above to allow the use of the term "fresh", but this is well below 0° C.
The best orange juice I ever had was on the streets of Marakesh. It's freakin' amazing, hard to describe actually. I never before or after this visit had that good of a orange juice.
One thing that affects perception of flavour more than anything else is how hungry and thirsty you are. Not that the orange juice in Marrakech isn't great (I've had it), but if you're really thirsty whatever you drink is going to taste amazing. Same goes for being really hungry and food.
What's interesting is that these perceptions persist even when you have those foods again. Having been exhausted and very hungry once and having had fish & chips afterwards, that flavour (of fish 'n chip-shop deep fried cod and greasy chips) still knocks me over every time I have it.
I've had a similar experience at a night market in Taiwan. A dude rigged up a press to squeeze the oranges into a jug then he poured it into a cup or you to buy. He had hundreds of juiced oranges in a pile beside his stand. I wish I had a picture to share.
My father grew up on an orange grove in Lebanon and ate lots of citrus fruit and drank a good amount of juice as a child . Living in the New Jersey for the majority of his adult life he always said that the frozen concentrate orange juice tastes the best; and it looked like orange juice . He always disliked the bottled juice , saying it didn't taste right to him, and it was too damn expensive. As I grew up I noticed that Tropcana and Minute Maid cartons gave me horrible indigestion, so I gave up on orange juice . I told my dad about this and he reminded me of two things one this is what you get when a large company makes food , people in suits with MBAs tell chemical engineers to make me a more profitable product . Two don't drink orange juice, stick to coffee , it has caffeine. Ymmv
I think it's because the flavor packets are also made from 100% Florida orange juice, even if it's just extracts processed from oranges, not the raw juice.
I've wondered why the fresh orange juice machines you see in Spain commonly are never seen in the United States. Is there a food safety law that prevents this or is it just a matter of preference?
Some places in the US have them, but usually they are commercial units. For most Americans that shop for staples one every week or two a gallon of pasteurized juice that keeps for two weeks under refrigeration is great compared to oranges that would not last nearly as long. OJ is a common component of breakfast but our shopping habits do not support fresh juice.
Roberts Market in Woodside CA used to have an orange juice squeezer until a few years ago. It was really nice - I could toss in oranges (or grapefruit, or tangerines) and go home with delicious fresh juice. Don't know why they removed it.
this is a tiny part of the price i pay for being able to buy it in a shop from bulk suppliers rather than having to juice my own fruit... besides that, i don't think its a heavy price to pay - i'm not sure i really see the harm tbh.
its not like they are flavouring it with deadly toxic poisons.
[+] [-] beloch|10 years ago|reply
This paragraph is, arguably, far more important than all the hysteria about flavor packs, but it's only partially correct. Fibre does help provide satiety but, in and of itself, it isn't what's good for you about eating whole fruit unless you simply aren't getting enough fibre and have issues with constipation. What fibre does do is reduce the rate at which we absorb sugar. Apple juice will give you a nice fast sugar high and then a low, much like candy. An apple will give you a gradual surge of energy for a while. If you're going to eat something sweet, it's far better for you if it comes combined with fibre.
So don't go searching for juice that doesn't use flavor packs. Don't buy a juicer and juice your own either, because you're still throwing away what separates fruit from candy. Don't mess around with fermenting juices and all that probiotic jazz. If you simply must drink your fruit, use a blender.
[+] [-] morsch|10 years ago|reply
Maybe don't buy your orange juice from subsidiaries of the Coca Cola company and Pepsico, as a starting point.
Also interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/2684u1/ysk_t...
[+] [-] dwich|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sparkzilla|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://christinescottcheng.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/tropica...
[2] http://civileats.com/2009/05/06/freshly-squeezed-the-truth-a...
[3]http://unclematts.com/resources/flavor-packet-faqs/
[4]http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/22/...
[+] [-] rdtsc|10 years ago|reply
Unless they plan on selling the juice just during harvest time, they need to store it. Try and store some juice you squeezed from oranges even in the refrigerator and see how long it will last and how it will taste. It will last some but not for 6 months.
Consistency. Tropicana tastes one way, others taste different. I don't know why you need any proof, products will change flavor after they are stored for a while.
> add massive amounts of chemicals to something to give it
I'll have to throw the "sauce, please" back at you here ;-) I don't see where in the article it says these flavor packs are massive. Flavor compounds if done right will not be massive. Have you ever added spices or vanilla to anything you cook or bake. How much of the total volume is it? It usually isn't much.
> No proof is provided of this assertion.
I think it is rather common sense that it would lose flavor, at best it would have a different / strange flavor.
> hardly something to feel alarm about.
Really, you don't have any idea why someone might be a slightly worried about this class of additives put into a popular food that gets to skirt by regulations based on "technical" language.
[+] [-] shawn-butler|10 years ago|reply
To complicate the matter further, juices that are concentrated for preservation, handling and storage and reconstituted for consumption (labelled "juice from concentrate") should be diluted back to approximately the same solids level (designated as Brix or percent soluble solids) of the initial juice. The amount of add-back water can vary substantially even within a given fruit, so reasonable commercial standards are set (FDA, 1999)
Juice is a pretty loaded word with lots of meanings. The tables in this document might help: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y2515e/y2515e03.htm
[+] [-] wodenokoto|10 years ago|reply
1) flavor. When you buy this brand of juice it taste this way
2) flavor consistency. No matter which field or time of year the can produce the same flavor.
[+] [-] lemevi|10 years ago|reply
http://www.foodrenegade.com/peru-bans-monsanto-gmos/
Just google GMO and this blog: https://www.google.com/search?q=GMO+site%3Afoodrenegade.com
[+] [-] eadz|10 years ago|reply
The dangers of GMO from a economic perspective are worthy of worry on their own. If you haven't seen Food Inc, then I would recommend that as a starting point to learn how dangerous the monopolisation of the food industry can be to society. The farmers in Peru want to protect their existing biodiversity, something North America has lost thanks to Monsanto, where you cannot legally grow a heirloom corn crop without paying patent fees to monsanto because of the inevitable wind-born cross pollination, thereby violating monsanto patent rights.
[+] [-] CodeWriter23|10 years ago|reply
HuffPo (complete with a letter from a OJ Industry Group PR Rep that does not refute anything in the article, just tries to reframe) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/100-percent-orange-...
The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ask-an-academic-o...
The Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2011/07/29/oj-flavor-packs/
Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/5825909/orange-juice-is-artificially-flav...
[+] [-] MrGando|10 years ago|reply
But are you okay with Montsanto's practices?
There's good science that basically explains that their business model is not doing the best for the planet or the people living in it. It is, indeed reducing bio-diversity as far as I know. Also, their practices are super shady, having lived in latam all my life, I saw the way they got into several countries there and it's disgusting.
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|10 years ago|reply
From a purely scientific standpoint, I'm for GMO, but I have to admit that I don't really know what's in the industrial food I buy. Worse, it's in the food industry's best interest to obfuscate, and it would be foolish to think that the GMO industry is any different.
[+] [-] jinushaun|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wvenable|10 years ago|reply
You could produce the exact same chemical result without this process a lot safer and cheaper but then you couldn't call it pure orange juice not from concentrate.
[+] [-] shirro|10 years ago|reply
Sometimes we trade taste and nutrition for convenience, safety, consistency and year round availability. I like freshly squeezed oranges off my orange tree but they don't grow all year round. I am mostly happy not to consume oranges out of season but that isn't really a basis for a sustainable industry and beverage companies have sensibly created a market for year round, consistent tasting juice products.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|10 years ago|reply
Don't label something "natural" or "100% fresh juice" if it's not.
[+] [-] rdtsc|10 years ago|reply
I am not proud of regulatory environment that allows them to not have to list those ingridients on package and instead do what they do and still claim "Fresh", "Natural", "Not from Concentrate" (i.e. pasteurized) etc.
[+] [-] grecy|10 years ago|reply
EDIT: https://www.google.com/search?q=nutritional+value+of+jurice+... (Change Juice type to Orange
[+] [-] ricardobeat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuschku|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaphp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|10 years ago|reply
Oh good, I thought you were afraid of chemicals
>I’m questioning the health or merit of so-called foods that are so devoid of flavor or color that we have to add back in chemical flavorings and colors to make them palatable.
Wait what? I thought you weren't questioning the health or merit chemicals? People like orange juice (more specifically, not from concentrate), and the cheapest way to produce something that resembles that is to store them in oxygen-free vats and add back flavor packs. Who cares if chemicals were used to achieve that flavor?
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|10 years ago|reply
It's almost as if they are two completely separate drinks.
[+] [-] archivator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|10 years ago|reply
> Haven’t you ever wondered why every glass of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice tastes the same, no matter where in the world you buy it or what time of year you’re drinking it in? Or maybe your brand of choice is Minute Maid or Simply Orange or Florida’s Natural. Either way, I can ask the same question. Why is the taste and flavor so consistent?
And then
> The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals
[+] [-] cba9|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|10 years ago|reply
It's one reason why I'm a fan of Soylent. I hope it starts a trend where we get we get honest industrial food instead of fake natural food. I'm not not at all convinced that their product is unique, but I hope it starts a trend, where manufacturers don't hide the fact that flavor and nutrition need to be designed in, and instead try to explain why the design they chose is the best design.
[+] [-] SunShiranui|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peteretep|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oneeyedpigeon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leephillips|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeena|10 years ago|reply
https://www.google.se/search?q=marakesh+orange+juice&tbm=isc...
[+] [-] fredley|10 years ago|reply
What's interesting is that these perceptions persist even when you have those foods again. Having been exhausted and very hungry once and having had fish & chips afterwards, that flavour (of fish 'n chip-shop deep fried cod and greasy chips) still knocks me over every time I have it.
[+] [-] rocky1138|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitmapbrother|10 years ago|reply
http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/orange-juic...
[+] [-] shiftoutbox|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umsm|10 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e4CEm9yybo
The most interesting thing was that people were so used to the taste of the processed OJ that they preferred it to the fresh squeezed OJ.
[+] [-] kazinator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dplgk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zck|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meursault334|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evgen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ridgeguy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jheriko|10 years ago|reply
this is a tiny part of the price i pay for being able to buy it in a shop from bulk suppliers rather than having to juice my own fruit... besides that, i don't think its a heavy price to pay - i'm not sure i really see the harm tbh.
its not like they are flavouring it with deadly toxic poisons.
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|10 years ago|reply