The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice

from Food Renegade:




The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice
Written by KristenM


Do you buy orange juice at the store? If you do, 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? The more natural kind? The kind without any additives? The kind that’s sold in the refrigerator section so it must be almost as good as fresh-squeezed orange juice?

If I’m describing you, then you’re either going to hate me or love me by the time you’re done reading this post. The truth is, that orange juice you feel so good about buying is probably none of those things. You’ve been making assumptions based on logic. The food industry follows its own logic because of the economies of scale. What works for you in your kitchen when making a glass or two of juice simply won’t work when trying to process thousands upon thousands of gallons of the stuff.

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? Why is it that the Minute Maid never tastes like the Tropicana, but always tastes like its own unique beverage?

Generally speaking, beverages that taste consistently the same follow recipes. They’re things like Coca Cola or Pepsi or a Starbucks Frappuccino. When you make orange juice at home, each batch tastes a little different depending on the oranges you made it from. I hope you’re hearing warning bells in your head right about now. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-juice/

:D

frequently

It seems like a perfectly stupid way to make oranges more expensive for real consumption.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=1605091

Dirty Little Secret: Orange Juice Is Artificially Flavored to Taste Like Oranges

It's not only the taste. It's the exact same consistency in your mouth every time. There's a thickness that real oranges don't have. Granted, it tastes very good and rolls on your tongue very nicely, but it ain't real.

of course there is a "recipe".

Are orange-flavored soft drinks. Ever tried to go hunt for real juice in a 7-11? How many people who shop there do you think even realize the difference? Why should it be OK to add artificial flavors to OJ making it taste repulsive and undrinkable?

And it actually tastes pretty good, not repusive. I love Simply Orange. But it has gone up in price. It used to run 2.00 dollars a carton, but it was 2.99 yesterday. But what the heck I am an avid tropical punch Kool-Aid drinker, so can't say much for the juice.

It's the fake lemonade and mixing corn syrup with fruit juice that I can't stand.

Heck, nobody likes to drink flat Coca-Cola, and it's basically corn syrup.

Have you noticed that you go to fine restaurants that serve "organic grass-fed pan-seared scallops" (and this is in the DC area where all the policymakers live) and the only lemonade ANY of them have on the menu is artificial lemonade?

... and does not list other ingredients on the carton. If they are going to add flavoring, they should be required to tell you that on the package.

Using "flavor packs" engineered by chemical and perfume companies.

But actually, there is an important stage in between that is an open secret in the OJ industry. After the oranges are squeezed, the juice is stored in giant holding tanks and, critically, the oxygen is removed from them. That essentially allows the liquid to keep (for up to a year) without spoiling– but that liquid that we think of as orange juice tastes nothing like the Tropicana OJ that comes out of the carton. (source)

In fact, it’s quite flavorless. So, the industry uses “flavor packs” to re-flavor the de-oxygenated orange juice:

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.

The formulas vary to give a brand’s trademark taste. If you’re discerning you may have noticed Minute Maid has a candy like orange flavor. That’s largely due to the flavor pack Coca-Cola has chosen for it.

Who can afford it? Oranges yes. I used to have my own juicer.. and making fresh Carrot Juice was wonderful. Nothing like the stuff you see in the stores today. The only way to make good juice is to
juice it yourself. Was amazed how many carrots it took to make a glass. Wish I still had my juicer but its broken, so now I drink Green Tea all the time. Organic green tea from Taiwan. I also have some left over Matcha from Japan.

...yum. I used to get it all the time from the health food store deli near my house. They juiced it right in front of you. It was so good. That and a free range chicken salad sandwich with carrots was an exceptional meal :)

I'm also a fan of tea - I usually drink iced tea (unsweetened), but I like green tea, too!

in bags from the Local Chinese merchants and tea seems pretty fresh. I always buy the bagged tea, so what I can do, is place several teabags in a pitcher and leave it out for a half hour or so. The tea steeps and makes a lovely ice tea. Lately I have added one bag of Ginseng tea. (That is pretty potent for me, any more then one tea bag to a half gallon will make me sick.) The tea will last me a day at most, and then I make another batch.

One of the best places to get tea is here:

http://www.tenren.com
They have a store in Chinatown on Grant Street at Jackson street. Or you can
order it via the internet.

Oh my word, what a wonderful selection of tea! I brew a gallon of tea every day (usually decaf - I don't need too much caffeine), but green tea is fairly low in caffeine anyway. It's nice to have a variation, and that place you linked to looks like heaven.

Suggest you try the Pu Erh tea. Its a brown tea that is lovely. They also have Oolong tea, Ginseng, as well as Green tea.

this garbage.

I don't personally drink it but everyone else I know does.

Either that, or all the brown sugar and ginger.

huh.

It all tastes the same to me...

:shrug:


Anyway, I don't drink much OJ. It gives me bladder problems. I fill my water bottle 3 times a day.

Olive Garden, AppleBees, Cigarettes, breastfeeding, circumcision, narwhals, pit bulls, smoking bans, Spitzer, High school bands and soda pop

kids on planes drinking caffeine, bombing the moon, tax fast food, Rapture, PETA, screaming kids in restaurants

Vaccinations, orange juice, Jessie James, Ipads, Michael Vicks, Octomom, unicorns and Charlie Sheen, now the Weiner's gone.

There is no argument here. Either buy oranges and make your own, or eat an orange when you feel the need. The chemicals may preserve the food, but they don't preserve us.

I've gone off store OJ, mostly because of cost, but also because I don't really like the taste.

We like an occasional small glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. We're not into "juicing", so don't want to splurge on a good electronic model.

Anyone used the old fashioned juicers?

I wish that you could order fresh-squeezed OJ in the states. In Spain, every little diner has a machine where you can see the oranges being cut and squeezed to make your juice.

It's worth the trip just for that and the hot chocolate.

I don't drink orange juice.
I like lemonade and limeade, but they're not trying to snooker me into thinking those are 100% "pure juice", either. I know they're concocted drinks.

That's a good enough reason for me.

Want to know what happens? Fruit arrives at plant, it's inspected and sent to bins for storage until needed for processing. The fruit is washed and on the way to the extractors it travels along a roller conveyor that has tiny needles that puncture the skin of the fruit to remove oil, which the water/oil mixture is collected in centrifuges and the oil removed, stored and sold as a by-product. The fruit has been separated by size at this point, cut in half and the juice, pulp and rag removed. The peel is sent to driers to be turned into cattle feed. The pulp is separated out by sieves and the juice has the oil removed. The oil is sent to a flavor house that specializes in food flavors (not perfume) and they do blend back the oil to certain proportions because companies want consistency of product, but it is all the oil from the fruit itself and it is Tropicana's recipe blend.

It would be hard to sell your product if each batch was a different flavor, viscosity, had different amounts of pulp, or color. I can only speak for Tropicana, but there is no added special ingredient. They blend using all the juice they either extract themselves or buy on the market to have year round OJ available in the market. Otherwise, you would have very inconsistent juice quality, it would only be available 7 months of the year and only in the SW or SE United States, because juice doesn't store well if left to itself, i.e. it has a relatively short shelve life. Yes, it is stored aseptically, otherwise it would go bad, again, OJ will oxidize and develop bad flavors one of which is diaceyl, not to mention bacteria developing, in a relatively short time. Not what you want to put on the market to make people sick. If you didn't remove the flavonoids, which are volatile, during pasteurization they would mostly volatilize off and you'd have no flavor left.

Yes, the company wants to make a product that is consistent in taste, mouth feel and color. All food products are the same in that regard. In the OJ business, you try to produce a year round product that actually only grows part of the year, each season there are challenges to quality and quantity based on how the year went regarding weather and blight. Rain and temperature are very important and need to be within certain ranges to get best crop and even than it is still somewhat of an art to producing commercial OJ.

So, if you want truly fresh OJ, buy the oranges and squeeze it yourself, otherwise, understand there isn't any "secret ingredients" or chemicals, other than those naturally occurring in the orange itself.