Hugely Shocking Truth
About Store-Bought
Orange Juice
According to Food Renegade:
“Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies … to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Orange flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature.”
More of the Undisclosed Truth
The ins and outs of mass-produced orange juice are explained in Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice. The book contains a potent reminder of the importance of understanding how your food is manufactured and processed. The label tells neither the whole story nor the whole truth. “Not from concentrate” does not mean less processed.“The technology of choice at the moment is aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so it doesn’t oxidize in the million gallon tanks in which it can be kept for upwards of a year. When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor-providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh.” The reason you don’t see any mention on the label about added flavors is because these flavors are derived from orange essences and oils. However, the appearance of being natural doesn’t necessarily mean it is. As Hamilton states: “Those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature.” Industrial produced orange juice in North America tends to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, which is one of the most commonly used chemicals in both flavors and fragrances. Aside from being versatile in creating a number of different flavors, including orange, cherry, pineapple, mango, guava, and bubblegum, just to name a few, it’s also one of the least expensive. Other markets, such as the Mexican and Brazilian, tends to contain different chemicals, such as various decanals or terpene compounds.
Why Many Natural Physicians Do Not Recommend Commerically-Produced Fruit Juices
- Contain hidden chemicals not disclosed on the label
- Have very high fructose content, like cans of soda
- Are pasteurized to devitalize vitamins and other nutrients
Fructose has been identified as a major culprit in the vast rise of obesity and a long list of related health problems.
Health Dangers of Excessive Fructose Consumption
- Fructose metabolized into fat.
- Fructose consumption leads to weight gains as it turns off your body’s appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the “hunger hormone”) and doesn’t stimulate leptin (the “satiety hormone”), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance. It decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome. For example, in one study, eating fructose raised triglyceride levels by 32 percent in men.
- Fructose consumption leads to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers.
- Fructose contributes to the development of gout by increasing the levels of uric acid in your body. In one study, published last year, women who drank 12 ounces or more of orange juice a day doubled their risk of gout, and those who drank just six ounces of juice per day still increased their risk by 41 percent. A similar study on men was published in 2008. In that study, men who drank two or more sugary soft drinks a day had an 85 percent higher risk of gout than those who drank less than one a month. Fruit juice and fructose-rich fruits such as oranges and apples also increased the risk.
It is thus important to watch the extent of fructose consumption, even with whole fruits, and not just processed juices.
Fructose as Major Health Hazard
According to recent research, uric acid in the body appears to increase with fructose consumption and takes a lead role in creating major health problems – especially when it reaches levels of 5.5 mg per dl or higher in your body. At this level, uric acid is associated with an increased risk for developing high blood pressure, as well as diabetes, obesity and kidney disease. He believes the ideal range for uric acid lies between 3 to 5.5 mg per dl, so getting your uric acid levels tested can further help you determine just how strict you need to be with limiting your fructose consumption.
