Nutrition

Is Orange Juice is a Healthy Way to Start Your Day?

December 16, 2009
By Stan Mrak

Orange juice has been promoted as a healthy part of the classic American breakfast for about as long as anyone can remember. The iconic image used by the orange juice industry is one of a whole orange with a straw inserted into it, creating the illusion that drinking commercial juice is just like sucking it right out of an orange off the tree.

How about “Not from Concentrate” products?

When the average consumer sees the words “100% Pure; Not from Concentrate” on a carton of orange juice, they’re willing to pay a premium price, thinking that they’re getting an even fresher and superior product than they can get from those frozen cans that require the addition of water.

In addition, the ingredients list on the carton may only list “100% pure orange juice,” nothing else. You could reasonably assume that what you’re getting is fresh juice, right from the fruit.

Unfortunately, that’s a far cry from reality. When you take a look at all of the facts, and discover the whole story about the juice-making process, you may never buy commercial orange juice again.

First of all, let’s examine the presumption that orange juice, even freshly-squeezed, is a healthy beverage.

Natural Sugar Content in Orange Juice

A glass of juice, whether fresh-squeezed or not, has about eight full teaspoons of sugar per eight-ounce glass. This is about as much sugar as a can of soda.

The sugar in orange juice is typically a fruit sugar called fructose, which many mistakenly believe is a “healthy” form of sugar.

When the sugar is consumed in its natural form, with the whole fruit, the fiber in the orange tends to slow the absorption of sugar and thus prevents a spike in your insulin levels. When you drink just the juice, it’s too much sugar, all at once, for your system to handle.

Elevated insulin levels are one of the primary drivers for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and weight gain. This may be why drinking fruit juice has been linked to an increased risk of diabetes, while fructose itself has been shown to increase your triglyceride levels.

The Manufacturing of Commercial Orange Juice

Many popular orange juice brands are chemically altered so they can be stored year-round, thus ensuring a consistent availability and taste. This process starts by stripping the freshly-extracted juice of oxygen so it won’t spoil as it sits in huge tanks for extended periods of time.

At the same time, this process also strips out all of the orange “essence,” including the orange taste and smell. What you end up with is basically tasteless and odorless sugar water.

In order to restore this liquid back to “orange juice,” manufacturers use cheaper and inferior-quality oranges from third-world countries, where agricultural regulations are often lax, and there’s little oversight to minimize pesticides and other contaminants like mold. These inferior oranges are used for their orange “essence,” which is extracted from the oranges and taken to the laboratory to create flavorings for orange juice products.

Why do commercial orange juices often have more orange taste than fresh-squeezed oranges?

In the lab, the manufacturer breaks down the chemical composition of the essence and add chemicals such as ethyl butyrate to develop their own proprietary “flavor pack.” These flavor packs are what give the particular orange juice its distinctive flavor and smell. These same laboratories are used to develop perfumes for the fragrance industry.

Manufacturers typically add more orange essence to the juice product than you would ever find in a real orange, giving their juice a stronger and sweeter taste than “fresh-squeezed” juice. These proprietary flavor packs are the reason why every glass of Minute Maid or Tropicana has its own distinct and consistent taste, year-round.

How Can You Tell if a Juice Product is Really Fresh?

You know you are buying a heavily processed juice if the “Best Before” date is 60 or more days in the future. Real fresh-squeezed orange juice will only last for a few days.

So if you just don’t want to go without your morning orange juice, squeezing your own at home or getting it from a fresh juice bar would be the only ways to get the real thing.

What are Healthier Alternatives?

If you really enjoy drinking juice, there are better alternatives than commercially-processed juices that you find in your supermarket. Highest among my recommendations would be any one of the popular superfruit juices such as acai or goji berry, mangosteen and noni. You can discover more about these superfuits here: Antioxidant Superfruits.

Stan Mrak has had a passion for nutrition for more than 30 years, ever since he picked up a book by Richard Passwater and discovered the world of preventive health. He has investigated many aspects of nutrition over those years, and shares more of his knowledge from his website at http://www.antioxidants-for-health-and-longevity.com. Please visit and learn much more about antioxidants and easy ways to get more of them into your diet.

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