The Orange Juice Dilemma

Orange juice at breakfast is a sweet way to start the day, but the Food and Drug Administration may soon make it less so. The FDA sets minimum standards for the amount of natural sugar in “pasteurized orange juice” sold without added sugars. If the juice falls below that threshold, it may no longer carry the ”pasteurized” label.

And that is important to consumers, because pasteurized orange juice is heat-treated to to kill harmful bacteria, pathogens, viruses, and other microorganisms. The process helps to extend the shelf life of the juice by slowing fermentation and contributing to better taste.

Simple as it sounds—you squeeze an orange and there’s the juice—squeezing enough to serve the public was complicated until 1869 when the website StartersKitchen credits an otherwise unknown man named Louis Hee with inventing a machine to do the job. That made commercial production of orange juice possible, but there were complications such as the limited availability of fresh fruit year-round. Growers solved that by concentrating the juice, that is, removing the water so what remained could be stored and eventually sent around in refrigerated train cars and trucks. At which point the government stepped in.

FDA rules require 18 grams of natural sugar in a single serving of juice, reckoned as an eight-ounce glass. But the citrus industry in Florida, which produces much of America’s juice, has gone down by more than 90 percent the last 20 years due to more extreme weather and the spread of a citrus greening disease, a bacterial attack that lowers the oranges’ natural sugar levels. As a result, trade groups representing the citrus-juice industry nationwide, and Florida’s own citrus growers, have asked the FDA to reduce the required levels by a single gram, from 18 to 17 grams per serving, while leaving all other nutrients intact.

True, that’s a small change considering that the actual sugar content in an eight-ounce glass of various popular juices is significantly higher. For example, Florida’s Natural Orange Juice and Minute Made Original Orange Juice each deliver 24 grams per glass. Simply Orange pulp-free juice has 23 grams, while Tropicana’s Original pulp-free has 22 (the sugar content in Tropicana pulp-free ”Light” slides all the way down to 11 grams per glass).

But, differences in sugar content aside, given Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA declarations (“Make America Healthy Again”) about what’s healthy and what isn’t, the bigger question is whether orange juice is truly as beneficial as we have come to believe. The answer is Yes and No. Nutrition-wise, orange juice is a pretty picture. Each prototype eight-ounce glass delivers about 100 calories, 9.6 grams sodium, 27 grams carbs including 20 grams of natural sugars, and one gram dietary fiber, two grams of protein, plus 60 mg vitamin C (80 percent of the daily requirement for an adult woman and 67 percent for an adult man) and 478 grams of heart-healthy potassium.

Nonetheless, when the Washington Post asked nutritionists to evaluate the benefits of orange juice, they got interesting answers, based pretty much on the fact that sugar, whether natural or added, is still sugar. As University of North Carolina nutritionist Barry Popkin put it: “Orange juice is sugar water.” In fact, “Every juice is essentially sugar water.”

As a result, said Peter Lurie, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, which advocates a healthy and safe food supply, “Juices are a dilemma,”

The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees and advises limiting how much juice parents should give children, such as no more than four ounces per day for kids 1 to 3 years old. Instead, they recommend real fruit, which contains more fiber than juice, a benefit that among other things, keeps you regular.