Orange Juice's 'Secret Ingredient'

You buy branded orange juice, you kind of want it to taste, generally, the same. That expectation is met by blending different varieties and, in order to blend, storage is involved. premium brand orange juice -- the "100 percent pure" and "not from concentrate" kind that comes in the colorful carton and tastes consistently delicious. "secret ingredient" in all premium orange juices that companies are not required to put on their labeling. For the last 30 years, the citrus industry has used flavor packs to process what the Food and Drug Administration identifies as "pasteurized" orange juice. That includes top brands such as Tropicana, Minute Maid, Simply Orange and Florida Natural, among others. The addition of the flavor packs long after orange juice is stored actually makes those premium juices more like a concentrate, and consumers need to know that. Experts estimate two-thirds of all Americans drink Florida orange juice for breakfast, and companies spend millions on their marketing campaigns touting its health benefits. The "not from concentrate" brands appeared on store shelves sometime in the 1980s to differentiate them from frozen juice and other bottled concentrates. Despite its high price tag -- now up to $4 a carton -- sales of the premium brands have soared. But those juices don't just jump from the grove to the breakfast table. After oranges are picked, they are shipped off to be processed. They are squeezed and pasteurized and, if they are not bound for frozen concentrate, are kept in aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen in a process called "deaeration," and kept in million-gallon tanks for up to a year. Before packaging and shipping, the juice is then jazzed up with an added flavor pack, gleaned from orange byproducts such as the peel and pulp, to compensate for the loss of taste and aroma during the heating process. Different brands use different flavor packs to give their product its unique and always consistent taste. Minute Maid, for example, has a distinctive candy-sweet flavor juices are blended and stored and that flavor packs are added to pasteurized juice before shipping to stores. Flavor packs are created from the volatile compounds that escape from the orange during the pasteurization step. "It's not made in a lab or made in a chemical process, but comes through the physical process of boiling and capturing the [orange essence]." The pasteurization process not only makes the food safe, but stabilizes the juice, which in its fresh state separates. Adding the flavor packs ensures a consistent flavor. The quality of the juice based on color, flavor and defects are then graded. FDA does not require adding flavor packs to the labeling of pasteurized juice (which includes the from-concentrate as well as the not-from-concentrate versions), because, "it is the orange," The flavor of orange is one of the most complex and is made up of thousands of chemicals." "They are fine-tuned so each company has its trademark flavor If consumers have the false impression that pasteurized orange juice is not heated or treated because they have a picture of an orange on the carton, then they are not informed.The orange juice companies market their premium brands as fresh-squeezed and better than concentrated. screening of imports, and imported foods need to meet the same standards as do foods grown or produced domestically. It's just wrong that they aren't being transparent about it. We as a consumer have a right to know exactly what's in the foods we are buying." Still, it's a secret ingredient and no one seems to know about it, 'Oranges' is all it says on the label -- a perfect product." .