Store It Foods

Does your morning begin with a glass of “Not from Concentrate” freshly squeezed orange juice poured from that carton that was just sitting in the refrigerator waiting for you.  It’s tasty, it goes down smoothly, and it’s good for you.

All that is probably true, but it might not be as fresh as you might think.  It very likely had originally been stored in some gigantic tank.  It had been heated for pasteurization purposes, with oxygen having been removed in order to lengthen its shelf life.   Unfortunately, along with the oxygen went the flavor.  If you were to avail yourself of some of the liquid refreshment taken from that enormous vat, it is said that it would taste much like sugar water.

Weeks later it might appear on your grocery store shelf, but by then the flavor would have been restored – sort of.  Your orange juice supplier would have gone to a “flavor house” where “flavor experts” would have provided “flavor packets” to insert into that orange juice.  So now that orange juice once again tastes like orange juice, or at least like the flavor experts think orange juice should taste.  And, yes, to most people’s taste buds it really does taste pretty good.

This might help to explain, however, why some people have allergic reactions to the store bought orange juice, but not to the freshly squeezed juice produced at home.  It’s not so much the orange juice to which they are allergic, as it is the added ingredients that have been incorporated into that juice.

So if you really want the best tasting juice, the healthiest juice, and most natural juice; perhaps you should simply prepare it at home beginning with the oranges themselves and with the help of your very own citrus juicer.