Have you ever wondered how they make orange juice? If you are like most people, you probably thought there was nothing to wonder about. Oranges are squeezed, and then they are either put into a container (the "not from concentrate" stuff), or the water is extracted from the juice to make the frozen orange juice you buy at your local grocery store. Simple, natural, pure, right? Wrong! Alissa Hamilton's new book, Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice, published by Yale University Press, sets out to debunk many of the common misconceptions about how "pure" orange juice really is, particularly the "not from concentrate" (NFC) kind. Hamilton exposes the reality of the NFC process, including the use of "flavour packs," in which the elements of oranges are altered and reconstituted, and then reintroduced into the juice after the juice has gone through an extensive pasteurization process that kills all of the original orange flavour. The orange juice industry feels that it can describe its product as 100 percent juice, since the flavour packs are derived from oranges, but Hamilton thinks this is stretching the truth. Even the most creative lawyer would likely agree. "This product obviously needs manipulation. It is not an orange with the straw through it, that is not what you are getting." Watch this CBC Today Interview with Alissa Hamilton Hamilton has recently completed her PhD in forestry and environmental studies at Yale University (Squeezed grew out of her thesis) and is currently a food and society policy fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis (although she lives in Toronto). Her book is just one attempt to help inform consumers about the process, and not just the ingredients, that are part of the foods they eat. "We tend to take it for granted that (we) have a right to know what is in food, but (we) know very little about how it is produced." Hamilton graduated from the University of Toronto's law school in 1998 and articled at Gowling, Strathy, and Henderson, now called Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. If people are shocked at how complicated the production of something as simple as orange juice is, then who knows what other food production processes we take for granted. "The more we demand information, truthful information, the more hope there is that things will change." We at Orange Juice Australia say, squeeze your juice fresh and serve it to your customers. Not only will your customers appreciate the fresh taste of fresh squeezed orange juice but as conumer education increases, they will be demanding FRESH SQUEEZED JUICE. |