[somat]

The process to make never concentrated orange juice logistically viable involves removing all the oxygen from the juice so it stores well. Now you can take a seasonal product like oranges and sell the juice the entire year around. Unfortunately removing the oxygen also removes most of the flavor. so what the bottlers do is add an engineered "flavor package" when they bottle the juice to add the flavor back.

I am halfway convinced that flavor wise frozen concentrated orange juice is "closer to the tree" than the "never concentrated" stuff. Nothing on fresh squeezed. But that is the price we pay to have a non-seasonal product.

[wombatpm]

As a chemical engineer we study the process for making frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ). IIRC you feed the juice into low pressure flash distillation that splits off most of the water. Problem is that many of the volatile compounds go out the top as well, and the resulting concentrate is blah. So you feed back in about 10% raw juice, pack the sludge in cans and freeze em.

The fun part was trying to find good estimates for viscosity for the two phase orange sludge in order to properly size the piping and pumps. Treating food products like chemical production is its own weird sub-specialty.

[somat]

Salutes on the post. After hearing the flavor tricks they have to jump through to make "never concentrate" I was sort of hoping the freezing process of FCO kept more of the original flavor. But it sounds like it does not.

The industrialization of food is really what enables our modern way of life. But it slightly horrifies me every time I learn more about it.

[exmadscientist]

"Cold pressed" seems to be what you want for keeping flavor. All the good supermarket juices are cold pressed.

[Eisenstein]

Couldn't they keep the aromatics, as they would be the first to come over, and then add them back?

[wombatpm]

Those get captured and sold separately.

[chrisco255]

Is it really non-seasonal any longer now that there are reliable international markets in southern hemisphere to support?

[pixl97]

I mean, they don't get teleported to the point of sale so most of the rules still apply to long distance shipping.