TreeHugger Scoop on OJ
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.11.07
Now that we have written that headline to tickle your RSS reader, We will talk about orange juice. According to Lucy Siegle of the Guardian, "Making a litre of fresh orange juice requires 958 litres of water for irrigation and 2 litres of tractor fuel. Then there are the pesticides. Orange production uses more than any other food crop.with obvious potential knock-on effects for both the biodiversity of the orange groves (bear in mind some 8 per cent of the world's agricultural land is already irrevocably damaged) and the health of low-paid and unregulated fruit-picking staff. One Oxfam report found independent orange farmers in Thailand financially crippled by loans taken out to pay for insecticides, and in poor health from spraying for 44 weeks a year."
Most of it comes from South American oranges and is concentrated there in evaporators using heat and vacuum (and fossil fuels), packed and shipped as frozen concentrate (requiring electricity to keep cool). It is then reconstituted with water and packed in PET bottles. Some is sold as "not from concentrate" like Tropicana (owned by Pepsi) which flash-pasteurizes it to extend its shelf life. They have an entire refrigerated "juice train" to move it from Florida to the Northeast. If you squeeze your own, (using a manual juicer, we hope) you are "you throw away skins and husks that have used up energy travelling thousands of miles."
What can you do? Go local. We start the day with apple cider harvested and pressed 128 kilometers (80 mi.) from home. ::Guardian
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What? you drink cider for breakfast????? Perhaps there's something "lost in translation" here. In teh UK (and most of Europe I believe), Cider is fermented apple juice, ie alcoholic! Apple juice drunk for breakfast would be referred to as just that, apple juice.
Maybe you ought to clarify that.....just a thought!
Keep up the good work, great site!
LA: Definitely something lost in translation. We call apple juice the clear yellow canned or bottled stuff, and we call the cloudy brown stuff cider. According to the manufacturer, it is an old Pennsylvania Dutch recipe: "After inspecting & Brush washing, the apples are turned into a pomace which is then pressed on our huge rack & cloth press. We feel this method of pressing apples gives this type of fresh pressed apple cider its excellent characteristics, Quality taste, and appearance. This cider looks darker & is more cloudy because it has not been filtered as much as other brands" No alcohol in that!
Too bad apple juice tastes horrible (not to mention lacking the nutritional content of good OJ). I and my partner can't stand it. And water's just not a breakfast beverage unless it's in tea form, and some people just don't like tea. Despite best efforts, I don't think many people will be giving up O.J. unless peak oil forces them to due to its eventual expensiveness or downright unavailability. It's just too good.
Hmm. Maybe carrot juice?
One thing that really amazed me was when I was in LA this summer, there were fruit stands all over selling things like oranges, but all the orange juice I could find was coming from Florida. Living in the northeast, I have always had "Florida" orange juice. I would assume that this is more regulated, and even if the work is being done by illegals, that it would be more ethical than in Thailand.
Juice frozen concentrate reduces packaging - which is why we use OJ concentrate in my house. Apple cider (or local juice) has a packaging issue, coming in giant bottles. Probably the life cycle analysis of local apple cider/juice is still better, but it's not perfect.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm going to explore cherry juice made from that organic cherry tree in my front yard... and see if I can get that apple tree to start actually producing apples.
note that "Florida" orange juice is very often "Florida Squeezed," i.e., the oranges are grown in south america (in chopped down rainforest sites...), shipped to Florida and "squeezed" there. Terrible terrible terrible.
Wow. Anyone know if grapefruit juice is any better? I am guessing not.
You tend to see FL orange juice in CA because CA oranges are usually sold in supermarkets for eating, whereas FL oranges are juiced. Why? Because CA oranges tend to look better (nicer-looking skins) whereas FL oranges produce larger quantities of juice.
Note that some orange juice companies do sell CA orange juice on the west coast during parts of the year. Ironically, Florida's Natural tends to be made from CA oranges when the CA crop of Valencia oranges is at its peak. (cartons are labeled "Made from Florida and California oranges" during that part of the year) Tropicana rarely uses CA oranges in my experience.
So during the part of the year when Florida's Natural is using CA oranges, I try to buy that brand (because I'm in CA so it is more local, and I find it tastes better, probably because it's fresher).
Better yet would be one of the local brands of orange juice made within 20 miles of my house, but the supermarkets tend not to stock those as much. (Probably because they go bad faster. I don't know whether it's a difference in packaging or pasteurization.)
I just go the urban foraging route. I ride my bike around the nearby neighborhoods and gather citrus. Local, free, and using what would otherwise go to waste!
first my bottled water, now my orange juice... i'm a horrible person.