Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice by Alissa Hamilton

Author:Alissa Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Industries, Technology & Engineering, Beverages, Corporate & Business History, Cooking, Crop Science, Food Science, Specific Ingredients, Fruit, Agribusiness, Agronomy, Agriculture, Non-Alcoholic, Business & Economics, History
ISBN: 9780300164558
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2010-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

XI

NFC Orange Juice Pours into the Nation

The FDA disregarded processors’ protests over whether to use the word “pasteurized” to describe pasteurized orange juice. Section 146.140 of the Code of Federal Regulations introduces the product’s standard of identity with the title “Pasteurized orange juice,” and the body of the text reiterates this: “The name of the food is ‘Pasteurized orange juice.’” It stipulates that the word “pasteurized” must be “shown on labels in letters not less than one-half of the height of the letters in the words ‘orange juice.’”1 Clearly the intent was to make “pasteurized” part of the public’s orange juice vocabulary. The regulation communicates the FDA’s belief that labels carrying more production-related information would help end orange juice marketers’ pretense that heat-treated and hand-squeezed juice are essentially the same thing.

Orange juice consumption statistics reveal that the appearance of the word “pasteurized” on orange juice cartons has not, as processors feared, diminished the product’s marketability. In fact, pasteurized orange juice has been the single standardized orange juice product among the family of twelve that has recently been gaining market share.2 On cartons of Tropicana Pure Premium the brand “Tropicana” is scribbled in large type and trademark style across the top.“Pure Premium” floats on a ribbon beneath. In smaller, italicized letters, “Not from Concentrate” completes the logo. Section 146.140 notwithstanding, this last phrase, “Not from Concentrate,” which Tropicana coined, has supplanted “Pasteurized orange juice” as the product’s common name. On the carton’s bottom corner, in small type, the word “Pasteurized,” which was the cause of so much controversy during the 1961 hearings, appears unobtrusively. Its inconspicuous positioning seems to contradict the spirit of the regulation, which requires that the word “pasteurized” be “shown on labels in letters not less than one-half of the height of the letters in the words ‘orange juice.’” Presumably anticipating that the industry would want to reduce the impact of the word, the FDA set a minimum stature, using the seemingly essential product descriptor “orange juice” as the referent point for the size of the word “pasteurize.” Evidently it did not anticipate that the words “orange juice” would lose their significance as a product descriptor. However, on Tropicana’s carton the words “orange juice” are written in italic type and in relatively faint script on the very bottom of the label, and the word “pasteurized” is located even more inconspicuously, detached from its referent “orange juice.” The regulation may even explain Coca Cola’s name for its not-from-concentrate: “Simply Orange.” Adding “Juice” would require substantial changes to the label, as “pasteurized” would then have to be more noticeable, printed in type that is at least half the size of the brand slogan. By deemphasizing—in this case by deconstructing the term “orange juice”—orange juice manufacturers have rendered impotent the problem word “pasteurized.”

Industry consultant Allen Morris, a one-time Tropicana employee, narrates an encounter with an orange juice buyer that confirms the processor’s success in effectively neutralizing this regulation. During an elevator ride the head of the litigation department of a major financial house struck up a conversation with him.

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