What's For Breakfast: Freshly-Squeezed Orange Juice

Let's talk orange juice. Last summer, this article about commercially-processed orange juice caught my eye. The idea that the carton of orange juice in my fridge was not exactly the "freshly-squeezed," "pure," or entirely "natural" product that the juice companies purported it to be kind of blew my mind. Sure, when you think about it, it is kind of odd that every carton of orange juice made by a particular brand tastes the same. Unlike the orange juice that comes from a carton, two glasses of truly freshly-squeezed orange juice rarely taste exactly the same.

I was so intrigued by the concept that I went straight to Amazon and bought a copy Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice by Alissa Hamilton. Though the book may not exactly be a page-turner, the story inside about the Florida citrus industry and the orange juice industry in particular was very elucidating.

Long story short, calling the juice you can buy in a carton "freshly-squeezed" is not the whole story. Yes, the oranges are squeezed, but the juice that is extracted doesn't go straight into a carton. Instead, in many cases, it goes into huge storage tanks where it is deoxygenated (and hence loses its flavor) for long-term storage. Typically, a different company produces "flavor packs" from a separate batch of oranges that provides the flavor and color for each batch of orange juice. Different companies have different mixes of flavors depending on the tastes of their consumers. For example, Minute Maid orange juice has a sweeter and more candy-like flavor than Tropicana or Florida's Natural products.

According to the author,

"The deal that now almost every orange juice processor makes to create a decent-tasting processed juice involves an intricate give and take between orange juice processor and flavor manufacturer, usually an outside flavor and fragrance house operator. Typically, the orange oils and essences that juice concentrators collect during evaporation are sold to flavor manufacturers, who then reconfigure these by-products and sell them back to juice companies."

So, the orange juice you drink from most brands of cartoned orange juice comes from two completely different batches of oranges. Interestingly, orange juice marketed as 100% Florida juice doesn't necessarily have to be made from, uh, Florida oranges. According to Catalina Ferre-Hockensmith, a staff member of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition,

"The natural orange flavor added to 100 percent Florida juice does not have to be derived from Florida oranges. We have no provisions in our juice standards of identity that stipulate from what oranges natural orange flavor must be derived. Therefore, the natural orange flavor added to 100 percent orange juice does not have to derive from the orange squeezed."

This news is particularly troubling as oranges grown outside the United States are not subject to the same regulations in terms of pesticide and fungicide use. For example, oranges grown in Brazil are treated with pesticides and fungicides that are illegal to use in the United States.

In addition, though the flavor packs are derived from natural means, that is, the essential oils and natural essences that are found in oranges, the flavor they impart is not replicated in nature. According to Daniel King, director of technical services at the Florida Citrus Processors Association,

"These flavor houses actually go in and fractionate these oils into various sections and individual components and then reblend from them. So you may put back into the product a blend that is relatively unknown in nature."

And, orange juice isn't even necessarily 100% made up of oranges. According to Hamilton,

"During the fall Hamlin orange season for instance, many [not from concentrate] producers add tangerines to their "100 percent orange juice." Tangerines contribute desired hue to the otherwise pale Hamlin squeezed juice. The practice is legal, so long as the citrus hybrid does not exceed 10 percent of the total juice content."

Clearly, a commercial that indicates that drinking a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice from a carton is exactly the same as drinking from a straw stuck in an orange is not telling the true story. Not by a long shot. According to Hamilton,

"The history of processed orange juice and its marketing highlights the fact that as a society we tend not to care too much about deceptive advertising unless the product being pushed is measurably harmful."

The funny thing is, frozen orange juice from concentrate (from which most "freshly-squeezed" brands clearly differentiate themselves) is actually closer to "freshly-squeezed" than the stuff you can buy in a carton. According to citrus industry consultant Allen Morris,

"...with aseptic [storage] tanks, the juice is heated before it goes into the tank and then again before it goes into the package, but with frozen block warehouses the juice is frozen and then heated only before it goes into the package. The more the juice is heated the more its freshly squeezed flavor is depleted."

The only way to be certain the orange juice you are drinking is freshly-squeezed? Juice it yourself. One orange = one small glass of orange juice. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Or, an even better (and more nutritious) option would be to just peel the orange and eat it whole.