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What killed the Florida orange?

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21–30 of 187 posts

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#21
post #15

This reminds me of the collapse of the Gros Michel banana variety, also due to disease. Near-100% loss of a food crop, even a luxury one, is an alarming thing to see though. (I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)

They mention it as a critical factor, the disease is spread by insects, which is spread by hurricanes. The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes.

> Hurricanes turned out to be a vector for spreading the little winged bug. The wind carried the psyllid all over the state, dropping it off in hundreds of thousands of acres of groves.

> It was the perfect storm. And then, of course, there were the actual perfect storms, the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge: Irma, Ian, Milton, massive cells, all direct hits on the groves.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#22

The other thing that I can't help but think has seriously hurt the industry is that, between concentrate and flavor packs, almost all supermarket orange juice tastes like garbage . Fresh-squeezed orange juice is, of course, the benchmark. If you ever taste Minute Maid back-to-back with fresh-squeezed, well, you probably won't be buying Minute Maid again any time soon. It just doesn't even taste like oranges. There ar…

Back before Starbucks bought them, Evolution was magical. They sold cold-pressed orange juice in the store that tasted fresh. I lived by that stuff!

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#23

It was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.

This is what happened to me. I would guzzle orange juice. I couldn’t start a day unless I had a giant glass of it. Then I found out that it was just all sugar and not much else. I don’t think I’ve had a glass of the stuff in over a decade.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#24

The other thing that I can't help but think has seriously hurt the industry is that, between concentrate and flavor packs, almost all supermarket orange juice tastes like garbage . Fresh-squeezed orange juice is, of course, the benchmark. If you ever taste Minute Maid back-to-back with fresh-squeezed, well, you probably won't be buying Minute Maid again any time soon. It just doesn't even taste like oranges. There ar…

[deleted]

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no metabolic effects from sweeteners, wish you lot would stop moving the goalposts on why sweeteners are unhealthy: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12098100/

The abstract says the study is useless: > However, given this study applied a heterogeneous ASB formula, it could not adequately consider the role of specific artificial sweeteners. Further research is needed to evaluate the potential effect of different artificial sweeteners and their doses on health.

Similar to the reports that talk about health problems with sweeteners. Not enough good data to be informative and actionable.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love cutting grapefruit in half and digging out chunks because at the end you get to drink grapefruit juice the way it was intended, as a reward for eating grapefruit.

Do you eat the seeds and poop them out somewhere nice? I think that’s what the grapefruit intended.

You could make the argument that the grapefruit succeeded in its intention already, by being so good that humanity tends and manages whole groves of grapefruit trees

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love cutting grapefruit in half and digging out chunks because at the end you get to drink grapefruit juice the way it was intended, as a reward for eating grapefruit.

Do you eat the seeds and poop them out somewhere nice? I think that’s what the grapefruit intended.

No that's silly. Everyone knows that when you eat a seed like that, the plant grows in your belly.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#29

It's not who killed it, it's what killed it and the answer is greed.

For anyone not aware, the most proximate cause of the disappearance of "Florida Orange Juice™ " is the Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus bacteria. Monoculture is often blamed, but the bacteria affects all citrus trees - oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, etc.

Those are all the same plant. Hybrids of Citrus. A monoculture.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#30

It was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.

Yes, the way I've heard it put is eating an orange is fine, but drinking a glass of juice is like eating an entire orchard.
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