Orange juice

Orange juice is the liquid squeezed from oranges, made by pressing or reaming the fruit. It can be made from several types of oranges, such as blood oranges, navel oranges, Valencia oranges, clementines, and tangerines. The drink also varies in how much pulp—called "juice vesicles" in technical terms, or "bits" in British English—it contains. These little sacs hold the actual juice, and manufacturers can either leave them in or strain them out.

How juicy these vesicles are depends on the orange species, the specific variety, and the time of year. In American English, people often just call it OJ. Commercial orange juice that lasts a long time on the shelf is pasteurized and has the oxygen removed. This process strips away much of the flavor, so a "flavor pack"—usually made from orange byproducts—is added back later.

Some juice is also dried and later rehydrated, or concentrated and then diluted with water before sale. Whether orange juice is healthy is up for debate. It’s packed with vitamin C, but it also contains a lot of simple sugars—comparable to soda.

History

Because of this, some government dietary guidelines now suggest swapping orange juice for whole fruit, which digests more slowly, and recommend limiting how much you drink each day. During World War II, American soldiers disliked the lemon-flavored vitamin C powder in their K-rations because it tasted bad. The government needed a better option that would prevent scurvy and taste good, so they teamed up with the Florida Department of Citrus and a group of scientists. Their goal was to improve on the canned orange juice of the 1940s.

The result was frozen concentrated orange juice, but it didn’t hit the market until three years after the war ended. By 1949, Florida’s orange juice plants were making over 10 million gallons of concentrate. Consumers liked it because it was high in vitamin C, affordable, tasty, and easy to use—just mix the frozen block with water and stir. In the 1980s, food scientists created a fresher-tasting product called reconstituted ready-to-serve juice.

Then, in the 1990s, "not from concentrate" (NFC) orange juice appeared. Orange juice is a common breakfast drink in the United States. Because oranges are so important to Florida’s economy, the state officially adopted orange juice—defined as juice from mature Citrus sinensis oranges and their hybrids—as its official beverage in 1967. An 8-ounce (250 mL) glass of fresh orange juice is 88% water.

Nutrition

It has 26 grams of carbohydrates (21 grams of sugar), 2 grams of protein, and 0.5 grams each of fiber and fat. That serving provides 112 calories and 149% of the daily value for vitamin C, plus moderate amounts (11–19% DV) of potassium, thiamin, and folate. Because of its citric acid, orange juice is acidic, with a pH around 3.5. As of 2020, researchers were starting to study whether orange juice could improve nutrition and affect heart health.

Frozen concentrated orange juice

Commercial orange juice and concentrate Frozen concentrated orange juice Commercial squeezed juice is pasteurized, filtered, and then evaporated under vacuum and heat. The resulting concentrate, about 65% sugar by weight, is stored at around 10°F. Essences, vitamin C, and oils that were removed during concentration may be added back to restore flavor and nutrition. When water is mixed with the thawed concentrate, it’s called reconstituted juice. This product was developed in 1948 at the University of Florida’s Citrus Research and Education Center.

It became a soft commodity, with futures contracts trading in New York starting in 1966, and options on those contracts appearing in 1985. From the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, frozen concentrate dominated the market, but not-from-concentrate juices overtook it in the 1980s. Not from concentrate Orange juice that is pasteurized and sold without being concentrated is labeled "not from concentrate." Like the concentrate process, this method also reduces natural flavor.

Not from concentrate

Large producers often store the juice in aseptic tanks with the oxygen removed for up to a year. Stripping oxygen also strips flavor compounds, so a flavor pack is added at the end. Cook’s Illustrated magazine called these packs "highly engineered additives." The formulas vary by region because consumers in different places prefer different levels of sweetness, freshness, and acidity. According to the citrus industry, the FDA does not require flavor pack ingredients to be listed on the packaging.

A common flavor pack ingredient is ethyl butyrate, a natural aroma that people associate with freshness. It gets removed during pasteurization and storage. Cook’s Illustrated sent juice samples to labs and found that fresh-squeezed juice naturally had about 1.19 milligrams of ethyl butyrate per liter, while commercially processed juice had up to 8.53 milligrams per liter. Canned orange juice A small amount of fresh orange juice is canned.