Tropicana Deception Suit Will Stay on the Shelves

[The Straight Story]

Tropicana Deception Suit Will Stay on the Shelves


(CN) - Tropicana must face claims that it misrepresents its processed, colored and flavored orange juice as "never from concentrate," a federal judge ruled.

Tropicana's website claims that "Tropicana Pure Premium is 100 percent pure and natural juice, with 16 fresh-picked oranges squeezed into every 59-ounce container. No water, sugar, or preservatives are ever added and it is never from concentrate, so you can get only the freshest, most delicious straight-from-the-orange taste."

The consolidated federal action in New Jersey alleges that Tropicana Products, a PepsiCo subsidiary, is lying about its "not-from-concentrate" (NFC) orange juice.

Seven consumers say the juice is actually pasteurized, deaerated, stripped of flavor and aroma, and stored for a year or longer before it is made available to the public.

Tropicana allegedly mixes many types of orange cultivars from Florida and Brazil to get the juice. Then it adds chemically engineered "flavor packs" to mimic the flavor and color of natural juice, and cover up quality, varietal, seasonal and geographic differences in the fruit it used, according to the complaint. These flavor packs are allegedly include oils from the peels of oranges grown in Mexico, Brazil and other foreign countries.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/06/18/58614.htm

[matt819]

1. I read about the juice processing a few months ago

And I haven't bought orange juice since.

Read Pandora's Lunchbox for more info on processed foods.

[jberryhill]

2. Is it from concentrate?

The story does not allege that anything in it originates from anything other than an orange.

I like this phrase though: "Mexico, Brazil and other foreign countries" as opposed to other domestic countries, I suppose.

[BlueToTheBone]

3. Now you know why most imports come

from other countries! What a moron * is and what stupid things he said.

[jberryhill]

4. I've seen plenty of auto repair shops that say:

"We specialize in foreign and domestic auto repairs"

Like.. where are those other people getting their cars?

But here, the "other foreign countries" is a dramatic flourish, as is a "chemical process" for adding oils which come from.... shock... oranges. I just love the writing style in these things.

Now, it might be pasteurized, de-aerated (to prevent aerobic fermentation), and blended with juices from various oranges according to seasonal variations in taste etc. in order to stabilize taste to a particular target, but I don't see how that affects the "100% from oranges and not from concentrate" claim.

The same story ran on some other company's orange juice process as well, and used the word "algorithms" to great dramatic effect.

Yet, somehow, we have a country with millions of people who expect orange juice year-round on their table every morning, without the slightest curiousity about how that is even possible. People want to believe in magic. They poop in toilets, push the handle, and the poop disappears. Where that poop goes, along with the poop of, oh, 5 million other people's poop in a city like Philadelphia is something that the vast majority of those 5 million people have NO FUCKING IDEA. And, if asked to consider what is necessary to manage the poop of 5 million people, they don't even WANT to know because, ew, it's poop.

These are the same millions of people who love to eat chicken but would utterly repulsed by the idea of actually killing one to eat it.

These are the same millions of people who expect electricity at a stable 110 volts and 60 Hertz to be available any time they plug anything in, and haven't the slightest idea where it comes from, how it is made, and how are we going to keep doing that when another 300 million people populate this country.

Here's the deal. Unless you live somewhere where oranges grow on trees you can see with your own eyes, then there is a buttload of technology involved in getting that glass of orange juice into the glass on your table in the morning. And if you squeeze your own from oranges grown on trees which are hundreds of miles away from where you are now, then the process of getting those oranges onto your kitchen counter used a lot more energy than running a tanker car of it to your city.