[Clamchop]

Calling it "the perfume industry" is a half truth. It's the flavoring industry, but it so happens that there's a lot of overlap between perfume and flavoring in terms of raw materials.

However, flavoring is a distinct profession. Besides that, very few novel compounds are allowed in food compared to fragrance. If any flavoring is synthetic in origin (which is not the same thing as novel, to be clear) then the product must be labeled as artificially flavored. If they call the product 100% juice and added flavoring is used, then that flavoring in turn has to have been sourced from the fruit.

In other words, they're using extracts from real oranges to reconstitute the flavor lost during pasteurization. They can further adjust which parts of the extract they use (called fractions and isolates) to dial in a particular flavor.

[ethersteeds]

I appreciate the nuance! My intention was to show that there's a surprising amount of correction for flavor and taste necessary even for one-ingredient "natural" foods.

[kyleee]

Primarily in bulk operations, none of that bullshit is needed if you just juice some fresh oranges into a glass and drink it…