(Via BoingBoing.) There’s a book coming out all about orange juice production. Here’s an excerpt of a Boston Globe interview with its author, Alissa 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…
I once poured a glass of orange juice from the carton, then made a glass of freshly-sqeezed OJ, and put the two glasses side-by-side. One was orange juice, the other was yellow juice. The flavor and texture couldn’t even be compared. I don’t remember drinking store-bought since then.
So how is any of this relevant to veganism? Because being clued in to topics like this makes life as a vegan infinitely more satisfying. People who don’t know any better and consume third-rate products like processed orange juice are less likely to be attracted to all the vegan world has to offer. Link.
