Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

foodrenegade.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 281 posts

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#251

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

batiste wrote: post #58
pmoriarty wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When consumers buy juice labelled "natural" or "100% juice" they expect juice that hasn't had anything added or taken away from it, especially not something that doesn't actually exist in nature. The article was written to inform consumers about what they're actually getting and how they're getting deceived.

"Natural" has pretty much 0 value as a label. What is natural and not natural would vary depending on which person you ask the question on the street... This is just marketing.

Crude oil is "natural" but you probably wouldn't want it in your OJ. ;)

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#252

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

ascorbic wrote: post #121
guelo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or water. I've always found Dasani to have a suspiciously consistent and unique flavor and mouth feel.

Dasani is tap water that has been purified with reverse osmosis and then remineralised.

It's rather strange as a Brit to hear that some bottled waters in the US are tap water. Here everything seems to be mineral water.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#253

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

kennydude wrote: post #246

In the UK I just stick to Innocent drinks who don't use any of that stuff. I love how they just use pictures on the labels :)

I used to love Innocent and everything they stood for but I have to admit I've been shying away from them since they became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola... :(

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#254

Post by NotOscarWilde »

pdkl95 wrote: post #123
kuschku wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you drink juice mixed with a lot of water. Often even the Schorle sold in stores has too much juice, average seems to be at 60%[1], I prefer more like 30%. In the recent years, 5% to 10% Schorle has become increasingly popular. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apfelschorle

An interesting type of (approximately) zero sugar drink is mixing bitters with {,cabonated} water. In particular, a dash or two of Peychaud's Bitters in soda water is almost like a floral (gentian) "kool aid"-style drink without the excessive sweetness.

Forgive my inexperience with alcohol (I have never drunk it and I am not from the States), but bitters as defined here [1] seem to be alcoholic -- therefore a bad choice for anything but after hours, leisure drinking, right?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitters#Cocktail_bitters

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#255

Post by [deleted] »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #253
kennydude wrote: post #246

In the UK I just stick to Innocent drinks who don't use any of that stuff. I love how they just use pictures on the labels :)

I used to love Innocent and everything they stood for but I have to admit I've been shying away from them since they became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola... :(

[deleted]

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#256

Post by kennydude »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #253
kennydude wrote: post #246

In the UK I just stick to Innocent drinks who don't use any of that stuff. I love how they just use pictures on the labels :)

I used to love Innocent and everything they stood for but I have to admit I've been shying away from them since they became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola... :(

True, it's not the best owner but they seem to be able to stick to their values which is nice

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#257

Post by tripzilch »

> 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?

I'll tell my experience when visiting the US a few years ago. I'm from the Netherlands, and here almost all orange juice is "from concentrate"[0].

It doesn't quite taste like freshly pressed juice, but I was never quite able to put my finger on it what was missing.

In the US I saw cartons of "actual really real juice not from concentrate really" for the first time, in a Whole Foods supermarket in Manhattan, NYC. So I got one of those and it was delicious. Still not quite like fresh juice, but really close.

(I don't think you can actually get the "real fresh orange juice" experience if you don't have fingers that smell like orange peel, and this vague worry that you should really wipe the kitchen counter before it'll dry all sticky)

So two days later I got another, different brand carton of "actually really real juice for realness totally not concentrate really". And it tasted pretty much like the "from concentrate" stuff at home (which still isn't bad, IMHO--unlike that "nectar" crap).

Next time at the same Whole Foods supermarket, I took a good look, and discovered there's basically (at least) two kinds of orange juice in the US: made from oranges in Florida, and made from oranges in Brazil (I think it was Brazil, 98% sure).

Now it made sense to me. In the Netherlands, nearly all our orange juice is from Brazil (afaik). And it was the "real juice not from concentrate" stuff from Florida oranges that was the juice that tasted (to me) mostly like fresh juice. And the Brazilian "real juice not from concentrate" that tasted like the "from concentrate" stuff at home.

Unfortunately I couldn't completely test the theory that maybe Florida oranges just juice better, concentrate or not, because at this particular Whole Foods I couldn't find any "Florida orange juice from concentrate". I'd have totally bought it to test the experiment, but I just couldn't spot any.

Does this make sense to any US-people? That have more time to buy and try different types of OJ? :-) Otherwise, just disregard this N=1 anecdote (but do let me know :P)

[0] There's an even cheaper kind called "orange nectar" which is half juice-from-concentrate plus water and some sugar/sweetener, but I can't imagine why anyone would buy that, ever. You can add water to juice at home without the sugar and it'll taste better, be cheaper, and healthier.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#258

Post by tripzilch »

dcosson wrote: post #217
icanhackit wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme. It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak,…

As I understand it, the process you describe is true of glucose but actually not fructose. Glucose gets absorbed into your blood, causes your pancreas to start releasing more insulin into the blood, which causes basically all the cells in your body to start absorbing glucose. Fructose on the other hand can only be processed by your liver, so all the fructose you eat just kind of queues up for your liver to process it…

But the sugars in fruit are not all fructose, right? It's a mixture of a bunch of different kinds of sugar molecules. I'm not sure what the exact ratio is, afaik in apple and orange juice the sugars are at least 50% glucose--but I'm not sure where I read that and it might be way off.

Either way, apple juice and orange juice have about 10-12g carbs per 100g (according to the packaging, in NL). Coca Cola has (not sure) I think, about 11g/100g? So I treat it about the same and drink it rarely.

The only difference is, you can mix up most types of juice 50/50 with tap water and it'll taste good (and if you're thirsty, actually better IMO). Try that with Coca Cola and ... nope :)

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#259

Post by aardshark »

tripzilch wrote: post #257

> 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? I'll tell my experience when visiting the US a few years ago. I'm from…

The article mentions the different chemicals favored by palates in different regions, so maybe you're just accustomed to the NL chemicals rather than the US ones.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#260

Post by mrfusion »

tracker1 wrote: post #188
beloch wrote: post #87

"Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fruit good for you. Did you know, for example, that it takes 6-8 medium sized apples to make just 1 cup of apple juice? You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. (I know I can barely eat one!) But you can casually throw back a cu…

A blender still isn't that much better than juicing as you've already done a lot of the breakdown work that your digestive system does allowing for more absorption, which in and of itself isn't too bad. For the most part, once you have enough protein in your diet, calories are calories. If you're predisposed to diabetes you're better off getting those calories from low glycemic sources. That doesn't make it easy to a…

I'd like to see a citation on that. I researched that issue a while back and the best I could determine is that no one has ever done a study on blending vs chewing.
Post reply on HN