"Florida used to produce most of the nation's orange juice. However, over the last couple of decades Florida's orange groves have been turned into condominiums as the industry has moved to Brazil, where land and labor are cheaper and where there are fewer environmental regulations. The farther juice travels and the longer it sits in storage the more heavily it is processed. Now the big orange juice companies hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that make popular perfumes and colognes, to engineer flavor packs to add back to their juice to make it taste fresh. Even most "not from concentrate," which is marketed as a fresher, higher quality product than "from concentrate," can sit in storage for a year and has flavor added to it. To call it natural is a real stretch." - Millet (724-)

The poor housing market in FL form the poor market and high home owners insurance, I wonder if that might stem the trend or even turn it back up just a tad.

I think it important to point out that this woman, who spent quite a lot of time on our campus and working in our archives, was completely dishonest with us. We had no idea she was writing a gossip rag, rather than a historically and scientifically valid book, but that's what she did. Many of her "facts" are made up or at least exaggerated to the point of unrecognizability. Yale University should be ashamed.

Dr. Manners, what do you expect? Alissa Hamilton is a Yale lawyer graduate. Besides her study of the American citrus industry, she also spent a lot of time in Brazil, studying the Brazilian citrus industry. I don't know if you read her book or not, but what is written above is quite innocuous in comparison. It is easy to see she might have an ax to grind. What seems rather strange is why she would pick on the citrus industry, of all things, to investigate (or castigate). I would say her book is much like a movie that claims ...."based on a true story". It might be based on a true story, at least it is from Mrs. Hamilton's point of view, but one might wonder, is this the same industry that I've known. Last week I attended a lecture by Mr. Eric Metaxas, the author of the outstanding book "Bonhoeffer- Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy", soon to become a movie. Mr. Metaxas is also a graduate of Yale University, but he certainly did not give a very high impression about Yale. Mr. Metaxas feelings seem to be , if you spent a life raising a nice young son or daughter, you might think twice before sending them to Yale. Lastly, given what is the actuality of it all: truth, fiction, or a stretch of both, the book is interesting. - Millet (721-)

Yes,it's most unfortunate. And I have thought that the Department of Citrus might in some way sue for defamation of character (if orange juice can have a character???) -- in any case, the suggestion that we're putting flavor additives into juice is absolute sacrilege to the Floridian mind -- the industry has always prided itself on adding nothing that didn't come from the orange itself. I see where she gets it -- in the concentrate process, what comes out the bottom of the evaporator is not complete oj, having lost some of its volatiles, which were distilled off the top of the stack. Those are condensed and added back, making the juice much closer to the original juice. The other thing we add back to concentrate, then, is (scary thought...) ORANGE JUICE! -- unconcentrated oj with all of its volatiles intact. In the case of not-from-concentrate juice, nothing is added. It is squeezed, centrifuged to remove traces of peel oil introduced in the squeezing process, filtered to remove seeds and pulp (for pulpy juice, some of that pulp is added back), flash-pasteurized, flash chilled, and put into the carton or into bulk storage (kept with cold, not chemicals). If the product is an "extra calcium" product, they will have added some dietary-grade calcium, but that will be listed in big letters on the label. If it doesn't say that clearly, it has not been added.

So yes, we were highly insulted about the book. If you read the parts about Florida Southern and Prof. Tom Mack, they are really insulting and again, just false. Yet when the woman was here, she seemed so delightful and friendly, and genuinely interested. We helped her with her research, freely, helped get her appointments with people in the know, tours of facilities, etc. She COULD have written a very good book, had she chosen to be truthful about it.

At first read it sounded as though she was bashing Brazilian companies who produce juice (not aware of any brand names). But after the above comments, is she saying the Floridian juice companies are buying squeezed juice from, or own manufacturing plants in, Brazil?

Without hesitation I would believe Malcolm's explanation of the process. However, typically when "based on a true story" there is some granule of fact, however small that was twisted into disinformation. What is the original grain of truth that the industry would hire fragrance companies?

C4F: The reverse is true -- some of the big Brazilian processors (Cutrale, Citrosuco) own processing plants in Florida, and they do import some of their Brazilian juice to blend into Florida product, when the juice is reconstituted from concentrate. But when that is done in Florida, Florida law prevails, and they must not add any sort of adulterant; if it says "orange juice," that's what it is. On the other hand, the "Pure Premium Not from Concentrate" product is Florida juice, since it is illegal (for quarantine reasons) to bring live fruit in from Brazil, and not really economically feasible to ship NFC juice. I''m not aware of an all-American-grown product that is made from concentrated juice. But NFC juice should be all Florida, or at least all USA (Florida's Natural, which has a plant in California, does blend in some California juice at that facility. I believe all of that product is sold within California.)

Here is what Alisa Hamilton says, word for word, about what she claims to be the adulterating of Florida Orange juice>>>>

" I don't expect juice companies to fill their labels with the details of how their product is processed. But it is reasonable to expect that the information they do provide be truthful and meaningful. Nothing Added, Almost Nothing Removed" fails on the first count: for one, flavor providing essences and oils have both been added to and removed from the juice being advertised. "Squeezed from fresh oranges" fails on the latter count: one would hope the oranges were fresh when squeezed. Although meaningless, the statement could easily be misread as saying "fresh squeezed". If I could wave a magic wand such marketing tricks would no longer be the norm. Food labels would inform rather than deceive and misleading:<<<<<
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Below is an article taken from The New York Times. This is what Alisa is talking about in her book "Squeezed".

"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. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine."<<<<<<

It seems to me it is all about nothing. All in all, I think Alisa Hamilton is trying to sell books.

Millet (686-)

Yes, there is where/how she is purposely deceiving the reader. It's precisely analogous to a chocolate cake recipe that I have. It uses 2 eggs. To make it, you separate the yolks from the whites, blend the yolks into the main batter, whip the whites separately, and then fold them back into the final batter. If I were now to advertise my cake as "contains two whole eggs," she would claim that I'm lying, since obviously, I've removed and added things! Silly nonsense, and she knows it. She conveniently fails to point out that ALL of those flavor essences and oils came out of the juice! They're added back to the juice.

And of course again, here, we're talking only about concentrated juice.

i do not want to disagree or anything i really do not know anything about the subject but this reminded me of something kind of similar that i remember about cigarets. if memory serves me well, several years ago there was debate about cigaret companies manipulating the amount of nicotine in their product. they removed the nicotine in the beginning of the processing and at the end they add it back. did they add more than what was naturally there i do not know.