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All Thumbs Book Reviews

Squeezed: What You Don't Know concentrate in 1948.
about Orange Juice Florida’s orange growers at first welcomed
By Alissa Hamilton this new technology as it not only returned
Yale University Press, 2010 more profits, but also created a new market for
their excess production. Soon thereafter, sales
Ever stop to think why we drink orange of “chilled” orange juice also began, along with
juice in the mornings? Or why we don’t simply significant investment in advertising. From the
peel actual whole oranges throughout the day beginning, employing trusted celebrities would
to quench our thirst? What exactly is the differ- prove a great marketing succcess as Bing Crosby
ence between marketing terms like “pure orange was hired in the 1950s to convince the home-
juice,” “concentrate,” “not from concentrate,” maker that squeezing oranges was a waste of
and “gently pasteurized”? Also, just how far time, and in the 1960s, Anita Bryant represented
back did food industry giants begin misleading the “all-American mother” who proudly provides
the consumer about orange juice, and how do a “wholesome and nutritious” product for her
they continue to mislead the public today? family.
Squeezed, by Alissa Hamilton, addresses Over the next fifty years and continuing
these issues as well as presents an investiga- today, the consumer has been deliberately misled
tive history of Florida’s orange juice industry, as to the purity of orange juice with many of the
its deceptive marketing practices, and some of following marketing phrases: “pure and natu-
the current global and competitive forces that ral,” contains only “100 percent pure squeezed
have radically transformed an industry from orange juice,” “made from fresh hand-picked
what once was a locally grown product into a oranges,” “nothing added, nothing taken away,
commodity that now most likely comes from only oranges.” As Squeezed reveals, commercial
Brazil. Along the way, the reader learns about orange juice is none of these things!
the early concerns by regulators as well as the In what would become an ongoing battle
very sophisticated marketing and science that between the FDA and marketers of orange
go into maintaining ignorance about a seem- juice, questions about how the juice was being
ingly uncomplicated product that is instead a adulterated first arose in 1956. In 1961, thanks
full-blown factory-processed chemical creation. to the FDA’s Standards of Identity Act of 1938,
Oranges probably first originated in South- a lengthy public hearing would begin to inform
east Asia and are thought to be a hybrid of a both regulators and consumers about the indus-
pummelo and a mandarin. The citrus fruits were try. One notable quote that almost seems impos- Just like
cultivated by the Chinese as far back as 2500 BC. sible to believe given the venality of today’s FDA, so many
Arab traders introduced the orange to Europeans was from the then FDA Commissioner, George
and from there the earliest Spanish explorers Larrice, who declared, “The consumer has a “advancements”
would eventually plant the first trees in Florida. right to know what is in his food.” By this time, in food
Just like so many other “advancements” in however, it is estimated that over twenty-five processing,
food processing, orange juice can be traced back thousand scientists were employed by the food orange juice
to the days of World War II, when hundreds of industry that had already introduced over seven
scientists were researching ways to provide sol- hundred food additives into the food supply. can be traced
diers with improved forms of condensed food. Manufacturers would also spend a large back to the
This individual, daily combat food ration became amount of resources in efforts to convince the days of World
known as the Army’s “K-ration,” which would consumer that commercial orange juice was not
ultimately lead to the invention of orange juice only as pure and nutritious as home-squeezed War II.
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