Is NONE of my Food Sacred?!
Ah, orange juice. So pure. So natural. So refreshing. Or so I thought until I found out the industry's dirty little secret.
I drink orange juice everyday. Let me rephrase. I DRANK orange juice every day. In fact, I was beginning to think something was wrong with me. I drank it A LOT. Almost addictively. It was becoming an expensive habit. But I never gave myself a hard time over it because it was orange juice...what could be so wrong with drinking a lot of orange juice, right? (Besides the fact that it is pasteurized, but I digress.....) Afterall, I wasn't buying it from concentrate, which is way worse for you.
Well, now I know why I was drinking it so incessantly.
- There's a reason why your orange juice always tastes consistent i.e. the taste never changes.
- There's a reason why Tropicana doesn't taste like Simply Orange.
- Besides pasteurization, there's another reason why the shelf life is really long.
Hey kids, an you say 'Aseptic Storage' and 'Deaeration'? These words of the day are brought to you by the orange juice industry itself and should replace 'Fresh Picked' and 'Natural'.
Most, If Not All, Store Bought Orange Juice is Made the Following Way
What I thought was a product that was merely grown, picked, squeezed, pasteurized and then put in a carton is not that simple of a process. The step between pasteurizing and packaging is an open secret in the Orange Juice industry and is standard industry practice.
After juicing the oranges, the juice goes to giant holding tanks and the oxygen is removed from them. This means that it can safely sit in there for up to a year. This also means that the liquid is now tasteless. What gives orange juice its flavor has 100% to do with the oxygen in it!
Flava Flave....Packets
So how come your orange juice tastes like - well - orange juice, then? Ah....the company add in flavor packets.
When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. 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 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, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine.
Flavor and fragrance packets! That means that 'they' have targeting specific neuro pathways and receptor sites in my brain that do set up addiction.
You have no idea how upset I am. We have all been duped. But maybe I should be grateful for finding this out. It has motivated me to finally buy that juicer I've been meaning to.
On the Hunt
So, I am currently on the hunt asking questions of various juice companies about this. So far, here's some good news:
From Naked Juice:
| show details 11:15 AM (4 hours ago) |
|
Amy:
We're always glad to answer questions about our totally unfooled around with juices and smoothies.
Naked Juice OJ does not contain any flavor packets. Our all natural juices and smoothies are made from the best bare-naked fruits, with no added sugar, preservatives, artificial colors or flavors, and over 3 servings of fruit in every 15.2 oz bottle, just for you.
We hope this information is helpful, Amy.
Michael
Naked Juice Consumer Relations
Source: Squeezed. What You Don't Know About Orange Juice
When you cut open a spaghetti squash, if the seeds have sprouted, just count on the thing being very bitter when you cook it. Learned that the hard way today. Yuck.
