What's in a Label

Ever wonder about your store-bought orange juice? What does it really mean when the label says ‘not from concentrate’ or ‘100% pure natural orange juice?’ Here’s the truth and it’s anything but natural!

The sad facts about commercially-sold orange juice are revealed in an eye-opening book, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, by Alissa Hamilton, J.D, PhD. Here’s what she found.


Industrially produced orange juice is made in huge vats and stored for up to a year. The juice is stripped of oxygen in order for it to have an extended shelf life, and in doing so, is also stripped of flavor.

What's Natural

Next, it’s pasteurized. This means that a great deal of heat has been introduced, and thus most of the nutrients are cooked off and lost. Any bottled, boxed or canned juice sold to the public must by law be pasteurized, even the best organic brands.

Next, the fiber is removed. Essentially, homemade orange juice has more pulp and fiber than store bought oj with ‘added pulp.’  

Next, certain vitamins, minerals and pulp are added back and termed ‘fortified.’ What are not returned – and never can be – are all the enzymes and phytonutrients lost in pasteurization and storage.

Next, flavor is added back in the form of ‘flavor packets.’ The contents of these added flavors are trade secrets developed by each company to suit a particular taste and create a flavor that’s always the same from one orange juice purchase to the next.

They get away with calling the resulting taste ‘natural’ because they claim the flavor packets are made of orange oils and ‘essences.’

Gone are all the nutrients in fresh oj that prevent disease such as the flavonoids which protect the body from UV-related DNA damage. Gone are the nutrients proven to deter cancer.

How does a beverage company get away with calling this natural?