i read in the SD archives what the legal requirements are for stuff labeled as “concentrated juice,” but it didn’t say why juicemakers concentrate the juice.
i’m drinking my cranberry juice, which i bought in a bottle, (not frozen concentrate.) the juice says its made from concentrate.
anyone know why? taste? production cost?
I always thought it was because hauling concentrated juice around was cheaper than the real stuff because you can carry so much more of it at a time.
I’ve wondered the same thing myself. I would assume the cheapest process would be to squeeze the stuff out, package it on the spot and ship it off. It makes no sense to, say, concentrate orange juice at a plant in Florida, ship it to Iowa, reconstitute it and package it, then ship it to the stores.
Then again, seasonality may have something to do with it. Rather than notice a changed taste when they go to reconstituted concentrate in the off-season, we suffer with a lesser taste throughout the year.
Concentrated juices are less likely to go bad during shipping etc. because of the increased acid content (aka lower pH) of the concentrated forms.
What do you mean, no sense? Have you ever made concentrated orange juice yourself? One can of frozen goop to two cans of water. That’s right, the original concentrate takes up a third less volume than the reconstituted product. Do you realize how much more product you could get from Florida to Iowa with the juice concentrated?
Couple that with the fact a lot of our juice comes from Brazil, and the overseas shipping bills would be insane if we didn’t concentrate.
There’s a reason you pay a bit more for that “Not from concentrate” juice, and it’s not simply because it tastes so damn good.
jb
The smaller volumes are much cheaper to transport and store(why spend money on somebody else’s water) and has a longer storage life than the fresh stuff.
There was a credo amongst the Unilever Group for it’s retail foods along the lines “use large, eye catching packaging and get as much water or air into the product as possible … preferrably air, it costs less to freight.”
According to John McPhee, in his book Oranges, the big breakthrough in creating an acceptable concentrate was to add a little extra orange oil to the concentrate. Otherwise the reconstituted juice was bland and unappetizing in comparison with the real thing. You may argue that it’s still not the same but the current products are a lot closer than they once were.
FWIW, McPhee’s book is a very good read. In fact almost any of his books are.
Obviously it’s cheaper to ship juice in a concentrated form. The OP refers to reconstituted concentrate. That means there’s a plant at the orchard to concentrate the juice, then ship it to whereever it’s reconstituted and packaged if not at the plant, then ship it (again) to the retailers in a non-concentrated form.
Yes, much of our juice is from Brazil, and yes, it is much more economical to ship that in concentrated form. But, much of our juice is from Florida and California. If I’m not mistaken, both Minute Maid and Tropicana are “from concentrate,” no matter how you purchase them. The supermarket sure isn’t reconstituting and bottling the concentrate, and there’s surely not several hundred reconstituting/bottling plants for juices spread strategically around the country. I submit that there must be other reasons than cost for selling reconstituted juice.
I don’t know if this applies to juices, but most other soft drinks are shipped around the country (as concentrate) to several hundred strategically located bottling plants. Since one of the above mentioned brands (Minute Maid) is a product of Coca-Cola, I’m sure they at least share distribution channels, if not bottling plants.
Using concentrates and reconstituting them lets the manufacturer get the juice from all over the country and the world in the concentrated form before reconstituting. So you can get apple juice from whereever it’s cheap, ship the concentrate, and then fill the bottles.