What's in your orange juice?
Globe Staff File Photo/John Tlumacki
Maybe or maybe not carbendazim, a fungicide linked to liver tumors in animals. After receiving reports from Coca-Cola (which produces Minute Maid and Simply Orange juices) and PepsiCo. (Tropicana) that low levels of the substance had been detected, the FDA began testing samples. The US now imports much of its OJ, and the fungicide is legal in Brazil, where much of the juice is coming from. Thus far, three out of more than 30 shipments have been cleared, according to the LA Times. Meanwhile, orange juice futures have been all over the map, hitting record highs and then plummeting over the course of the past week. (Adding to the volatility, freezing temperatures in Florida have hurt the crops there.)
There's no reason to panic if you've been chugging OJ. But even if all of the samples are determined to be fine, orange juice may not be exactly what you think. A few years ago, I interviewed Alissa Hamilton, author of the book "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice," for the Globe's Ideas section.
Here's an excerpt. (Click here to read the whole interview about orange juice.)
IDEAS: What isn't straightforward about orange juice?
HAMILTON: It's a heavily processed product. It's heavily engineered as well. 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 flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it's ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.
IDEAS: What goes into these flavor packs?
HAMILTON: They're technically made from orange-derived substances, essence and oils. Flavor companies break down the essence and oils into individual chemicals and recombine them. I spoke to many people in the industry at Firmenich, different flavorists, and at Tropicana, and what you're getting looks nothing like the original substance. To call it natural at this point is a real stretch.
Hamilton also says that looking to Brazil to provide most of our orange juice has created a real struggle for Florida growers.
So even if OJ is declared fungicide-free, there may be reasons to switch up what's in your morning glass.
Of course, most of our apple juice now comes from China. (And, along with grape juice, may come with an additional tasty surprise: arsenic.) How about grapefruit? About 99 percent of that juice found in the US comes from this country, according to this story.
Even the cheese used to attract us mice into the trap is sub-standard, nice to know we believe the marketing pictures over any intrusion of nutrition reality.
To buy or injest food from China is absolutely insane.
It is amazing how this country is determined to produce less and less, both of industrial and agricultural products, and to concentrate instead on weapons.
We're being raised like stocked trout. We accept processed foods and infant formulas into our diets as if the food industry has been benevolently researching what's best for us to ingest. Then when cancer develops in us, we scramble to race for a cure while turning our backs on identifying and eliminating the cause.
Grapefruit juice is the way to go.
Another reason to stop drinking juice and start drinking more water.
Why would I buy apple juice, which is processed six ways from Sunday and shipped in from China (scarier than the processing), when I can drive a mile down the road to the local apple orchard and buy apple cider that was fresh pressed there, made from apples grown right here in my town? They've added a climate-controlled storage building for keeping their fall harvest so that they can use fresh local apples in their cider year round.
I've made peace with the fact that everything is slowly killing us. I'm much happier now. No added stress when reading articles like this. Good times.
I think a bag of Doritos would be healthier than this "orange juice", and at least the Doritos aren't flogged on us as breakfast food!
I just buy whole citrus fruits anyway, including grapefruit from FLA. It lasts longer in the refrigerator and is better for you. And while some healthnuts take grapefruit seed extract (which has its own controversy) a whole grapefruit has the benefits of that as wel.
We have such a bountiful food supply in this country. Why do we need to go elsewhere?
The photo you used is WAY out of date. The Shaw's, Tropicana, Florida's Natural and Minute Maid carton designs are long-gone. Taking a close look at the photo shows that the picture was taken in January 2006(squint at the 'sell by' dates), when the cartons held an actual half-gallon of juice. Also, Florida's Natural cartons and Tropicana, Simply Orange and Minute Maid varities in carafes, have gone down to 59 ounces. Shaw's is still in a half-gallon (64 ounce) carton.
Just bought my own juicer. This way I know the whole foods that go into my juice because I'm the on who picked them out, cut them up and juiced them.
It might be a bit more expensive to pick organic / usa/ locally grown fruits and veggies but at least it's not apple juice from china.
I notice a lot of people buying diced garlic in a jar. Or pre-cut garlic. That stuff is all from China too.
If we didn't have all these food additives/problems we would live too long....therefore this process is meant to cut lives so our world won't be over populated. Don't you get it?
"People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time." That's a real cheap shot with nothing offered as evidence. What is quite a long time? a week, a month,what ? What is wrong with it. A typical alarmist cry of "fire" with nothing stated. Do you own stock in grapefruit concerns?
Mo: The article said it could be as long as a year.
This is good news for me: It gives me an incentive to stop drinking OJ, which is even more fattening than tonic.
BTW, ask your doctor before you drink grapefruit juice. It conflicts with a long list of medications and probably some medical conditions too. It's safer to simply avoid it.
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