Squeezed

Alissa Hamilton on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer

Watch Alissa Hamilton on a "Consumer Watch Dog" segment on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer!  (Guest hosted by George Stephanopoulos)  Read the full ABC interview online.

 

"Squeezed author" examines beverage industry transparency

The current issue of Organic Product Retailer includes an interview with Alissa Hamilton about the research she conducted on the orange juice industry in support of her book, Squeezed. The issue's cover story details strategies for "braving the beverage aisle" in both traditional and specialty grocery stores, where drinks are often marketed in misleading ways to appear healthier than they truly are.

Click here to read the interview in a fully interactive digital edition of the magazine.

Behind the label: orange juice

The following article by Pat Thomas originally appeared on July 13 in the Ecologist:

Most orange juice manufacturers would have you believe that OJ is purity in a glass; a simple, natural, single-ingredient product.

But behind this image of purity is a product that is heavily processed and engineered. If it's made from concentrate, the juice goes through a process where all the water is removed - and with it much of the flavour. In the case of 'not from concentrate' juice, the liquid is pasteurised and 'deaerated' so it doesn't oxidise. It's then put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year.

This process also strips the natural flavours form the juice. When the juice is ready for packaging, companies add chemical 'flavour packs' consisting of orange oils and flavourings to make it taste fresh again. The flavours they add are designed to meet local taste expectations; thus OJ in California might taste completely different from that in Spain or the UK.

The end product may taste fine, but to call it 'natural' is probably stretching credibility.

Orange juice as a mass-produced product grew out of attempts to supply vitamin C to soldiers stuck on the front line in WWII. From a health perspective OJ does contain useful amounts of antioxidants - but these rapidly deteriorate once the product is opened. Most types of orange juice, whether they are made from concentrate or not and whether they are chilled or not, are similar in terms of vitamin C and antioxidant content.

But of course this really misses the point. For those with no access to other better sources of vitamin C such as fresh fruits and vegetables, orange juice may well be an important source of such nutrients. But the fact remains that for someone on a good diet, processed orange juice is a nutritionally unnecessary and inferior way to get the fullest spectrum of vitamins and antioxidants.

Even so, the UK market for fruit juices and health drinks (i.e. smoothies, vitamin enhanced waters etc) was worth an estimated £2.92bn in 2007, and fruit juices accounted for around half of that. In the UK OJ is still our best seller.

Now in addition to its health properties, consumers are being invited to ponder the carbon implications of the world's favourite fruit juice. In January of this year PepsiCo in the US announced that its best-selling orange juice brand, Tropicana (also the UK's biggest selling fruit juice), had gained accreditation from the UK's Carbon Trust. This entitled the product to carry the Carbon Label, which tells consumers what the carbon footprint of a product is on its package (although the label has yet to appear on Tropicana products anywhere).

Ask an Academic: Alissa Hamilton on Orange Juice

The following interview with Alissa Hamilton was originally posted by Andrea Walker on the New Yorker's Book Bench blog:

Why orange juice?

In general, I am interested in how the food-processing industry is affecting the growing of major agricultural crops in the United States. It struck me that orange juice would be a perfect case study, because so many drink it, and the product is essentially processed oranges.

In your Introduction, you write that most orange-juice drinkers are “misinformed about what it is they are drinking.” Is it the “processed” part that most consumers are misinformed about?

That’s part of it. Most are surprised to hear, for instance, that the big brands, which market their product as “pure” and “simple,” add flavor packs to their juice to make it fresh. But people are also misinformed about the growing of juice oranges. A flight attendant once told me that he gets far more requests for orange juice on flights to Florida, because there’s still a strong association of oranges with the state. Yet most of the juice he’s serving now comes from Brazil, where there are fewer environmental regulations, and labor and land for growing oranges are cheaper.

Woah. Back up to the flavor packs. Why doesn’t orange juice taste fresh naturally, especially if it’s “not from concentrate”?

Squeezed.jpgFlavor packs are fabricated from the chemicals that make up orange essence and oil. Flavor and fragrance houses, the same ones that make high end perfumes, break down orange essence and oils into their constituent chemicals and then reassemble the individual chemicals in configurations that resemble nothing found in nature. Ethyl butyrate is one of the chemicals found in high concentrations in the flavor packs added to orange juice sold in North American markets, because flavor engineers have discovered that it imparts a fragrance that Americans like, and associate with a freshly squeezed orange.

Freshly squeezed orange juice tastes fresh naturally, and some supermarkets do sell it. However, “from concentrate” and most “not from concentrate” orange juice undergo processes that strip the flavor from the juice. The largest producers of “not from concentrate” or pasteurized orange juice keep their juice in million-gallon aseptic storage tanks to ensure a year round supply. Aseptic storage involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so the juice doesn’t oxidize in the “tank farms” in which the juice sits, sometimes for as long as a year.

Are these recent inventions?

The tank farms that have come to play a central role in the large-scale production of “not from concentrate” orange juice are a fairly recent innovation. In the nineteen-eighties, Tropicana’s solution to providing a year-round supply of Pure Premium “not from concentrate” juice was simpler: it stored frozen slabs of freshly squeezed juice in above ground tunnels. In the early nineties, it replaced most of these tunnels with the cheaper aseptic storage tanks. Some say Tropicana used to taste better. Considering the degree to which aseptically stored juice must be doctored to taste like orange juice, it’s not surprising that those who have been drinking Tropicana long enough can taste the difference.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to ask you this, but what was your take on the Tropicana redesign controversy?

The controversy was mostly over aesthetics. I don’t have much of an opinion about that, and don’t feel entitled to one, because I don’t buy the product. However, I do have something to say about a statement I noticed on the top of the new and now discontinued carton: “squeezed from fresh oranges.” Although meaningless as is (I would hope the oranges Tropicana squeezes for its juice are fresh), it looks and sounds a lot like “fresh squeezed” and could easily be read that way by supermarket shoppers. It isn’t the first time Tropicana has tried to reinvent its juice from the outside rather than the inside. In the late nineteen-eighties, it came up with the phrase “not from concentrate” to distinguish its pasteurized orange juice from the cheaper “from concentrate” or “reconstituted.” The idea was to convince consumers that Tropicana’s juice was a fresher, less processed product than reconstitute, and therefore worth paying more for. Then, unlike now, the effort was successful: within five years of the name change, sales doubled and profits almost tripled.

Freshly Squeezed: The Truth About Orange Juice in Boxes

The following article by Alissa Hamilton originally appeared on CivilEats.com:

It’s orange juice season. More precisely, it’s the season of the Florida Valencia, considered the “Cadillac of oranges” within the orange juice industry for its deep orange color, high juice content and rich orange flavor.

We’re so used to getting orange juice 365 days of the year that it may come as news that even Tropicana Pure Premium has a season. But it does. From March until June the Valencia is in its prime in Florida, and even Californians will admit that Florida grows a superior Valencia. The state produces a few other varieties for juicing. The Hamlin, which peaks in late fall, is the most heavily planted. But anyone who has anything to do with the manufacture of commercial orange juice knows that nothing compares to Florida Valencia juice.

The leading orange juice companies such as Tropicana (owned by PepsiCo), Minute Maid and Simply Orange (owned by Coca-Cola), and Florida’s Natural tell us many stories about orange juice: it’s natural, it’s pure and simple, it’s squeezed from oranges grown on pristine looking trees in Florida. But they leave out the details about how most commercial orange juice is produced and processed. Considering roughly two thirds of US households buy orange juice, Americans have a right to the whole story. As Tropicana launches its $35 million marketing campaign “Squeeze, it’s a natural,” it’s time for a reality check. Tropicana orange juice is not “relatively straightforward,” as reported in a New York Times article about PepsiCo’s recent decision to calculate the carbon footprint of its Tropicana brand of juice.

In the 1980s Tropicana coined the phrase “not from concentrate” to distinguish its pasteurized orange juice from the cheaper reconstituted “from concentrate” juice that began appearing alongside it in the refrigerator section of supermarkets. The idea was to convince consumers that pasteurized orange juice is a fresher, overall better product and therefore worth the higher price. It worked. Over the next five years sales of Tropicana’s pasteurized juice doubled and profits almost tripled.

In fact, “not from concentrate,” a.k.a pasteurized orange juice, is not more expensive than “from concentrate” because it is closer to fresh squeezed. Rather, it is because storing full strength pasteurized orange juice is more costly and elaborate than storing the space saving concentrate from which “from concentrate” is made. The technology of choice at the moment is aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so it doesn’t oxidize in the million gallon tanks in which it can be kept for upwards of a year.

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. Some companies have even been known to request a flavor pack that mimics the taste of a popular competitor, creating a “hall of mirrors” of flavor packs. Despite the multiple interpretations of a freshly squeezed orange on the market, most flavor packs have a shared source of inspiration: a Florida Valencia orange in spring.

If you like orange juice and want to buy American, now is the time. Only during this time of year can you pick up a carton that contains Florida Valencia juice that has not spent months in storage. The rest of the year, whether you buy Minute Maid’s “from concentrate,” or Tropicana’s “not from concentrate,” you’re drinking a mixture of Florida juice, some or all of which has been stored from previous seasons, and juice shipped from Brazil, which conveniently grows oranges when Florida doesn’t. Even the Florida based company Florida’s Natural, which is owned by a cooperative of Florida growers, imports Brazilian concentrate for its “from concentrate” juice line.

Or maybe you want to try something new for breakfast: a whole Florida Valencia orange. It’s higher in vitamin C than a glass of processed juice and the flavor is incomparable. The thick-skinned, easy to peel and separate Navel has been marketed as the eating orange of choice. But Navels have a lackluster flavor compared to the Valencia.

Sampling a Florida Valencia is a timely and good experiment, if only to refresh your senses and awaken them to the taste that your favorite brand of orange juice strives to imitate. Sure a whole Valencia orange may be messy, but all things considered, so is a glass of OJ produced by any of the major labels.

Letter to the Editor: The F.D.A. and Engineered Food

The following letter to the editor originally appeared in the New York Times in the fall of 2008 in response to the October 4, 2008 editorial "Coming to a Plate Near You":

To the Editor:

What is especially troubling about the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to consider commercializing genetically modified animals is that consumers currently have no way of knowing which products sold in stores are, or contain, genetically modified organisms.

If the F.D.A. is going to introduce genetically engineered fish and beef into supermarkets, then transparency must extend to labeling. Regardless of whether the agency determines that the new organisms are safe, we have a right to the information that will enable us to choose whether we want to buy them.

Alissa A. Hamilton

Toronto, Oct. 5, 2008