Overview

How orange juice became a North American breakfast staple and what “100% pure orange juice” means today Close to three quarters of U.S. households buy orange juice. Its popularity crosses class, cultural, racial, and regional divides. Why do so many of us drink orange juice? How did it turn from a luxury into a staple in just a few years? More important, how is it that we don’t know the real reasons behind OJ’s popularity or understand the processes by which the juice is produced? In this enlightening book, Alissa Hamilton explores the hidden history of orange juice. She looks at the early forces that propelled orange juice to prominence, including a surplus of oranges that plagued Florida during most of the twentieth century and the army’s need to provide vitamin C to troops overseas during World War II. She tells the stories of the FDA’s decision in the early 1960s to standardize orange juice, and the juice equivalent of the cola wars that followed between Coca-Cola (which owns Minute Maid) and Pepsi (which owns Tropicana). Of particular interest to OJ drinkers will be the revelation that most orange juice comes from Brazil, not Florida, and that even “not from concentrate” orange juice is heated, stripped of flavor, stored for up to a year, and then reflavored before it is packaged and sold. The book concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of why consumers have the right to know how their food is produced.

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9780300164558

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Reviews

Behind the wholesome facade industry has created for orange juice is Alissa Hamilton's remarkable story of corporate power, marketing, trade and labor issues, and shrinking biodiversity. This story needs telling. -Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., Yale University, co-author of Food Fight: The Inside Story of The Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It -- Kelly D. Brownell Full of zesty, fresh insight, concentrated scholarship, and unsweetened truths, Alissa Hamilton's Squeezed will give you a healthy mistrust not just of orange juice, but of corporate America's agenda for all our food. -Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved -- Raj Patel . . . reveals that orange juice, with its image as a natural Florida product . . . is often shipped from South America. . . . Consumers have a right to know what they're consuming . . . and that is at the heart of [the] story. -Devra First, Boston Globe -- Devra First * Boston Globe *

Behind the wholesome facade industry has created for orange juice is Alissa Hamilton's remarkable story of corporate power, marketing, trade and labor issues, and shrinking biodiversity. This story needs telling. -Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., Yale University, co-author of Food Fight: The Inside Story of The Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It -- Kelly D. Brownell Full of zesty, fresh insight, concentrated scholarship, and unsweetened truths, Alissa Hamilton's Squeezed will give you a healthy mistrust not just of orange juice, but of corporate America's agenda for all our food. -Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved -- Raj Patel ... reveals that orange juice, with its image as a natural Florida product ... is often shipped from South America... Consumers have a right to know what they're consuming ... and that is at the heart of [the] story. -Devra First, Boston Globe -- Devra First Boston Globe

. . . reveals that orange juice, with its image as a natural Florida product . . . is often shipped from South America. . . . Consumers have a right to know what they're consuming . . . and that is at the heart of [the] story. -Devra First, Boston Globe -- Devra First * Boston Globe * Full of zesty, fresh insight, concentrated scholarship, and unsweetened truths, Alissa Hamilton's Squeezed will give you a healthy mistrust not just of orange juice, but of corporate America's agenda for all our food. -Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved -- Raj Patel Behind the wholesome facade industry has created for orange juice is Alissa Hamilton's remarkable story of corporate power, marketing, trade and labor issues, and shrinking biodiversity. This story needs telling. -Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., Yale University, co-author of Food Fight: The Inside Story of The Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It -- Kelly D. Brownell

'You won't believe how many ambushes have been sprung on the noble orange on its tortured way from the orchard to your gullet. In this exemplary, accessible commodity study and history of regulatory failure and industrial chicanery, Hamilton lays it all out. Would that every major element in our daily diet had so able a sleuth and historian.' James C. Scott, Yale University 'Squeezed reveals that orange juice, with its image as a natural Florida product, bears the fingerprints of chemists and is often shipped from South America... If orange juice isn't harmful, it also isn't what it's portrayed to be. Consumers have a right to know what they're consuming, Hamilton says, and that is at the heart of her story.' Devra First, Boston Globe

Author Information

Alissa Hamilton is a Food and Society Policy Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She lives in Toronto.

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