Orange Juices Flowing

Insights about the most popular breakfast bev are sure to get your creative juices flowing... about how best to replace OJ with something else.

The Current Pickle

That's right, we said REPLACE. YOUR. OJ. We've grown up thinking it's the perfect breakfast drink (or brunch mixer), loaded with nutrients like Vitamin C! Well, turns out it's also loaded with sugar - almost the same amount as soda (5 to 8 teaspoons per tiny 8 oz cup). While there is a lot of Vitamin C in that cup, it's way healthier to eat the whole orange than a glass of orange juice: with the single fruit, your chewing helps you feel full, you're getting fewer calories per volume, and all the healthy stuff that got filtered out in the juicing process stays intact (like fiber, antioxidants, phytonutrients). Eating whole fruit is associated with a reduced (or neutral) risk of diabetes, but drinking fruit juice is associated with an increased risk.

But OJ doesn't just put us in a human health Pickle. Every time you purchase a product from Minute Maid, Simply Orange (both owned by Coca-Cola) or Tropicana (owned by PepsiCo), you are supporting an orange-growing process that includes a ton of fertilizer.

By using fertilizer, orange growers are increasing the carbon footprint of your OJ by 140%. Here at The Pickle, we care a lot about the environment, and we want to encourage you to buy products that don't have an unreasonable carbon footprint. (Find out more about your carbon footprint!)

One third of the oranges coming out of Florida go to Pepsi and Coke, so you have buying power to decrease your sugar intake, decrease your carbon footprint, and make a different choice - find organic orange juice if you have a hankering for a treat!

What’s the Dillio with Concentrate?

Let's clear up what concentrate actually means.

Fresh-squeezed, unpasteurized: shelf life of 12 days, so you either make this yourself or have a local company making it! (Whole Foods does this.)
Frozen, concentrated: the juice is pasteurized (heated up to kill bacteria), water removed, and then frozen. "Essences" may be added back in for flavor before being turned into those little cans in the freezer section! You reconstitute the concentrated juice by adding water.
Pasteurized, not from concentrate: Manufacturers strip out the oxygen from fresh squeezed juice in order to store it longer. Once they do that, the amazing fresh orange flavor is gone, but you're gonna get some orange-flavored bevvie on the shelf 365 days a year... how? Flavor packs (often derived from foreign fruit, where there are different regulations on pesticides) get added back in prior to cartoning it up! Insane.

The Hot Pickle

We know you've probably just once tried to drink some OJ after brushing your teeth. Turns out there are researchers devoted to trying to figure out why the toothpaste + OJ combo is so bad!

If you're gonna treat yo-self (maybe as dessert before your bedtime brush sesh?), aim for some of Uncle Matt's or Evolution Fresh: small portions, from organic oranges.