The truth about juice | Bread & Butter

Today while killing time between my morning and afternoon classes I found a quiet spot to hunker down and peruse my favorite newspaper ".com's" looking for some recent food news.

While clicking through the Boston Globe's website I came across an interesting Q & A with Alissa Hamilton the author of an expose on - a surprisingly seedy - juice industry:

The Globe: 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."

The Globe: To what degree is orange juice still made from Florida oranges?

Hamilton: "Most concentrate is now from Brazil. Shipping it is relatively easy. Until recently, you could count on [Tropicana] Pure Premium being from Florida, but shipping technology has advanced.

Companies like Tropicana have started shipping full-strength juice from Brazil rather than buying and squeezing in Florida.

The majority of not-from-concentrate is coming from Florida-squeezed oranges, but that's certainly changing. The orange growing is moving to Brazil, which grows the most oranges for juice by far. Land is cheaper, and environmental regulations are almost nonexistent."

The Q & A is worth a read and functions as a little preview to the dirt Hamilton dug up in the forthcoming book "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice", due out in May, which I will certainly be picking up to read.