Do You Want Orange Juice With That? 2012?

"That glass of sunshine sitting on the breakfast table isn't as pure and simple as you think it is, according to an exposé of the orange juice industry.
Although orange juice "has come to symbolize purity in a glass," it may be heat processed, watered down, sugared up, doctored by flavour engineers and stored for a year. "
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Dirty Little Secret: Orange Juice Is Artificially Flavored to Taste Like Oranges

"How do you make orange juice? Simple! Squeeze oranges and drink. How do big box companies make orange juice? Complicated! Squeeze oranges, remove oxygen, re-flavor the now flavorless orange juice with artificially orange "flavor packs" and...drink? Uhh...
I never thought about it but it makes incredible sense now. Orange juice from Tropicana, Simply Orange, Minute Maid, Florida's Natural, etc.—they're all ridiculously consistent in their flavor. And the trick isn't to get the most delicious tasting oranges but rather to create their own unique artificial flavor.

It all starts with the stripping of the oxygen. Once the juice is squeezed and stored in gigantic vats, they start removing oxygen. Why? Because removing oxygen from the juice allows the liquid to keep for up to a year without spoiling. But! Removing that oxygen also removes the natural flavors of oranges. Yeah, it's all backwards. So in order to have OJ actually taste like oranges, drink companies hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that make perfumes for Dior, to create these "flavor packs" to make juice taste like, well, juice again. A 2009 report says:

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.

The flavor packs aren't listed in the ingredients because they're technically derived from "orange essence and oil", whatever that means. So just remember, when you buy Orange Juice next time, even though it says 100% juice (which it is), it's still 100% artificially flavored. [Food Renegade via Hacker News]
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Orange Juice: What’s Really in the Box?

"Before you feed your libido with a vitamin C-packed glass of orange juice, you might want to consider reaching for the whole fruit instead.

In her book, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, Alissa Hamilton tells you what’s really in that not from concentrate box from the grocery store.
To keep it from oxidizing, manufacturers process Valencia orange juice to remove oxygen before it’s stored in huge tanks for almost a year at a time.

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.
So how can we make sure our daily dose of vitamin C doesn’t come with a “flavor pack” of chemicals? Fresh squeezed juice is a great option, if you have a shop near you that does that kind of thing. Of course, you can also juice your own. My favorite option, though, is the one Hamilton suggests in her post on the topic: eating the whole orange. As she points out:

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.

That sounds just delightful! Way better than a glass of mystery flavoring, for sure!"
Source: Eat Drink Better (http://s.tt/12BjW)
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The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice

"Do you buy orange juice at the store? If you do, I’m sure you’re careful to buy the kind that’s 100% juice and not made from concentrate. After all, that’s the healthier kind, right? The more natural kind? The kind without any additives? The kind that’s sold in the refrigerator section so it must be almost as good as fresh-squeezed orange juice?
If I’m describing you, then you’re either going to hate me or love me by the time you’re done reading this post. The truth is, that orange juice you feel so good about buying is probably none of those things.

You’ve been making assumptions based on logic. The food industry follows its own logic because of the economies of scale. What works for you in your kitchen when making a glass or two of juice simply won’t work when trying to process thousands upon thousands of gallons of the stuff.

Haven’t you ever wondered why every glass of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice tastes the same, no matter where in the world you buy it or what time of year you’re drinking it in? Or maybe your brand of choice is Minute Maid or Simply Orange or Florida’s Natural. Either way, I can ask the same question. Why is the taste and flavor so consistent? Why is it that the Minute Maid never tastes like the Tropicana, but always tastes like its own unique beverage?

Generally speaking, beverages that taste consistently the same follow recipes. They’re things like Coca Cola or Pepsi or a Starbucks Frappuccino. When you make orange juice at home, each batch tastes a little different depending on the oranges you made it from. I hope you’re hearing warning bells in your head right about now.
The reason your store bought orange juice is so consistently flavorful has more to do with chemistry than nature."
More at: http://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-juice/
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What’s in Your Juice and Why You Should Care

A friend bought a 14-ounce carton of Tropicana apple juice for her two-year-old and was shocked to find this surreal statement under “Ingredients”:

Contains concentrates from Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Chile, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, China and the United States.

That an American company such as Tropicana (owned by PepsiCo) can’t figure out a way to make an apple juice with “concentrates” from U.S. apples alone illustrates exactly what’s wrong with food policy and food safety in this country. Presumably, it’s cheaper to make an apple juice from concentrates sourced from these ten countries. (Convenient that labeling laws don’t require you to say what percentages come from each country. Maybe it’s 75 percent from China and small percentages from the other nine countries…) Certainly, it’s not an attempt to jump on the locavore bandwagon the way other mainstream brands have recently done, or to guarantee food safety. (I’m not going to kvetch about the other countries on this list but China is no stickler when it comes to food safety.)

We’ve heard a lot about processed orange juice lately (there’s even a book about it, Squeezed), which nearly two-thirds of Americans buy, and how it’s packed full of flavor-providing chemicals and fragrances. (Despite what the packaging and glitzy new ad campaigns say about it being “100% Juice” and “Fresh.”)  Why should it be any different with apple juice?

What gets me is that doctors and food safety experts get in a complete tizzy when people drink raw milk from a farmer they know or eat a locally-sourced hamburger medium rare, yet they don’t seem to give a damn that there are all sorts of ingredients (from ten or more different countries, no less!) in processed foods, some of which are chemicals that are added in excess of what is found in the unadulterated food. So we may be slowly poisoning a generation of kids with various chemicals but if they don’t keel over with headline-grabbing e. coli, then hey, everything is A-OK!  (This brings to mind the controversy about PFOA, which is released from chemicals that are used in the slick coating of microwave popcorn bags…)

Alissa Hamilton, author of “Squeezed,” writes about how orange juice is infused with “flavor packs”—chemicals made from orange-derived substances that improve the flavor after the juice has been pasteurized, stripped of oxygen  (so it can then be stored in aseptic vats for months on end) and any residual natural flavor. The ingredients list never mentions the flavor pack chemicals, because, she says, “The regulations were based on standards of identity for orange juice set in the 1960′s. Technology at that time was not sophisticated at all.”

Much of the O.J. oils and essences that U.S. O.J. companies are using these days—not to mention the juice itself—comes from Brazil, a country that has different pesticide laws than the U.S. does.
The industry has fought listing the “flavor packs” under ingredients. “They don’t want people to know. Their argument is that it will confuse people,” says Hamilton.
So much for transparency. Let’s hope the Obama administration updates food labeling laws (or merely gets the FDA to enforce them better) soon so we can know what, exactly, we’re feeding our kids and ourselves."
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Why I Don’t Recommend Fruit Juices

"While oranges and fresh squeezed orange juice can be a good source of vitamins and other nutrients, it’s also very high in fructose. In fact, one eight-ounce glass of orange juice has about eight full teaspoons of sugar and at least 50 percent of that sugar is fructose. That’s almost as much as a can of soda, which contains approximately 10 teaspoons of sugar.

So one eight-ounce glass of orange juice will wallop your system with 25 grams of fructose, which is more than you should have the entire day. Since fructose is loaded into just about every processed food, it would be very difficult to avoid exceeding your daily fructose limit of 25 grams per day. Additionally fruit juice is far worse than the whole fruit, especially if it is not freshly juiced and is stored in containers, as the methanol in the juice will dissociate from the pectin and actually increase your risk of M.S.

Fructose has been identified as one of the primary culprits in the meteoric rise of obesity and related health problems, and while the majority of the problem is caused by the large quantities of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) added to so many processed foods and beverages, naturally-occurring fructose in fruit is also best avoided if you’re struggling with stubborn weight issues or any of the diseases I just listed.
When the sugar is combined in its natural form in the whole fruit it causes far less of a problem, as the fiber tends to slow its absorption and prevents over consumption. But once you remove the fiber, you end up with a different product. Additionally, a lot of the antioxidants are also lost in the process—especially if it has been pasteurized, which most store bought juices are.

Therefore, as a general recommendation, I suggest avoiding fruit juices as much as possible, as they will spike your insulin to a far greater degree than a piece of whole fruit. As an illustration of the difference between whole fruits and fruit juices, one 2008 study concluded that:
“Consumption of green leafy vegetables and fruit was associated with a lower hazard of diabetes, whereas consumption of fruit juices may be associated with an increased hazard…”

As a standard recommendation for the average person, I advise keeping your total fructose consumption below 25 grams per day, with a maximum of 15 grams of fructose from whole fruit. However, if you’re overweight or have any of the related health issues mentioned above, you’d be well served to cut that down to a total of 15 grams of fructose a day, including that from whole fruit. The following table can help you calculate your fructose from fruit consumption:
Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose: Limes 1 medium 0
Lemons 1 medium 0.6
Cranberries 1 cup 0.7
Passion fruit 1 medium 0.9
Prune 1 medium 1.2
Apricot 1 medium 1.3
Guava 2 medium 2.2
Date (Deglet Noor style) 1 medium 2.6
Cantaloupe 1/8 of med. melon 2.8
Raspberries 1 cup 3.0
Clementine 1 medium 3.4
Kiwifruit 1 medium 3.4
Blackberries 1 cup 3.5
Star fruit 1 medium 3.6
Cherries, sweet 10 3.8
Strawberries 1 cup 3.8
Cherries, sour 1 cup 4.0
Pineapple 1 slice
(3.5″ x .75″) 4.0
Grapefruit, pink or red 1/2 medium 4.3
Boysenberries 1 cup 4.6
Tangerine/mandarin orange 1 medium 4.8
Nectarine 1 medium 5.4
Peach 1 medium 5.9
Orange (navel) 1 medium 6.1
Papaya 1/2 medium 6.3
Honeydew 1/8 of med. melon 6.7
Banana 1 medium 7.1
Blueberries 1 cup 7.4
Date (Medjool) 1 medium 7.7
Apple (composite) 1 medium 9.5
Persimmon 1 medium 10.6
Watermelon 1/16 med. melon 11.3
Pear 1 medium 11.8
Raisins 1/4 cup 12.3
Grapes, seedless (green or red) 1 cup 12.4
Mango 1/2 medium 16.2
Apricots, dried 1 cup 16.4
Figs, dried 1 cup 23.0
More at: http://drpinna.com/dr-mercola-avoid-orange-juice-22789
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Yesterday:

Ray was busy, and Jay didn't feel well.  He said that a fast food breakfast burrito which their neighbor across the street,  Muffie's 'Dad", had brought him, made him sick.  Claudia, his mother, had one too, but she didn't get sick.  They had cooked some pork the night before, did not check it with a food thermometer, but that didn't make her sick either.  He gets sick often, and we all know that it is his drinking!

Misty and I went down there about 11.00 AM, to pick up some things from Claudia.   Misty had her walk-about, and talked to Muffie through the fence.  I couldn't let her inside Muffie's fence today, as her 'Dad'  had been watering their grass which made little rivers, and near blind Misty would have got all muddy.

So we came back across the road to Claudia's, so she and Maddie could visit on their covered porch.
Jay finally got all the stuff together, so Misty and I came home. 

Misty spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping, and I got some extra chores done, like trimming cat's claws, cleaning closet door mirrors and patio doors, watering the plants on the screen porch, and working on drafts for this journal. 
Oh, and I answered some concerns my granddaughter had about the end of the world in 2012.  http://www.ucg.org/news-and-prophecy/world-news-and-trends-2012-end-world/
One day maybe I can get back to my sewing machine.

The kittens had their couple of hours of "house time". As soon as they hear the clink of their china food dish, they come a-runnin'  back into the grooming room. Just not safe to have them under foot when I am cooking.  But I didn't even get a chance to cook.
 
While I was outside watering the plants in front of the house, Claudia called and she sounded worried as Jay had been drinking all afternoon and was getting mean.  As we were talking, the power went out, so our cordless phones became useless.  She called me back on her cell phone, as she knows that I keep a couple of wired phones plugged in.  Jay took off on his three-wheel ATV to keep cool.  Maybe he will get a DWI on it!
Amazingly, it was raining in their front yard, but not the back, I guess it has to have an edge somewhere.  But it didn't rain here, even though I heard thunder in the distance.   Hopefully, it was raining over at Dizzy-Dick 's, about 20 miles from here.

With the power out, I didn't want to let too much cold out of the fridge, so I quickly grabbed some cold things to eat.  Not knowing how long the outage would last, I checked the flashlights etc. before it got dark.  Just as I was turning on my cell phone, so that I could plug my laptop to the house phone's Dial-Up, the power came back on. Whew!  It's too hot and muggy to be without AC for long. 

I am tired of postponing things hoping that I will be picking up the repaired washing machine, so I am grooming Muffie today.