The other thing that I can't help but think has seriously hurt the industry is that, between concentrate and flavor packs, almost all supermarket orange juice tastes like garbage. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is, of course, the benchmark. If you ever taste Minute Maid back-to-back with fresh-squeezed, well, you probably won't be buying Minute Maid again any time soon. It just doesn't even taste like oranges. There are a few brands available (the expensive ones, of course) that do come close enough to actually taste like oranges, but when the mass-market product falls that far down in quality, you can't help but wonder how anyone still wants to buy it.
A local grocery store used to make their own fresh squeezed using a refrigerator sized stainless steel machine that might as well have been a Rube Goldberg machine with its winding metal wire chute full of oranges which led to the squeezing head. That thing was kept right in the aisle next to the refrigerator case they kept the juice in. It was the best orange juice though expensive as it was over 10 bucks a quart when the store finally closed. I tried to call and buy the machine but got nowhere. Turns out the owner died so the family closed up the shop and liquidated it.
As for Minute Maid, it has always tasted awful to me and it tasted worse in the 80s. The only packaged OJ I can stand is Tropicana.
I've always found it pretty scary how some mass-market foods have diverged almost completely from the thing they are actually representing. The weird milky vaguely-citrus flavor of chemical that comes in the box labeled "Orange Juice" is just one of many examples. For another example, go taste a grape and then taste some so-called "grape juice." It's actually mostly apple juice, and doesn't even remotely taste like grapes.
It’s the boiling frog problem. Consumers gradually become used to lower quality. 15 years ago, McDonald’s was good. You knew it was bad for you but it was so good that you just didn’t care and it was a great cheat meal. You could get an Angus Delux meal for $7. https://wealthgang.com/mcdonalds-prices-throughout-the-years...
Of course they discontinued the angus burgers that actually used high quality ingredients compared to the McDouble / quarter pounders.
Now it’s $12 for a double quarter pounder meal and it tastes like shit. I only notice this because I just didn’t eat there much in the last 15 years. Meat quality and bun quality has clearly gotten worse. I don’t know how they keep growing sales.
It was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.
This is what happened to me. I would guzzle orange juice. I couldn’t start a day unless I had a giant glass of it. Then I found out that it was just all sugar and not much else. I don’t think I’ve had a glass of the stuff in over a decade.
What if you make fresh squeezed OJ at home, eat the leftover pulp and skins first, and then drink the juice? I wonder if that has the same glycemic impact as eating an orange.
Critic acid is probably the most potent tooth eroding dietary acid you can put in your mouth. This means anything lemon based is out, even sparkling water with lemon flavor. Orange juice is also out simply because of the sheer quantity.
Sugar based soda is terrible because it leads to oral dysbiosis, which is the leading cause of caries (bacterial acids) and gum disease. If you have persistent bad breath or bitterness in your mouth, you will probably need a probiotic treatment.
But here is the kicker: Diet soda is even more acidic than regular soda! Worse, avoid anything with orange or lemon added to it.
Although drinking water is the best thing you can do for your teeth, this doesn't mean you have to give up on juice or soda. It just means you should never drink juice or soda on its own. Always drink it in combination with a meal to soak up the acids. No matter what you eat, you should always wash it down with plain water.
It's not monoculture, it's Florida's climate being the perfect environment for the psyllid that causes the disease. California's drier, less humid climate has been more resilient to the bug.
This reminds me of the collapse of the Gros Michel banana variety, also due to disease. Near-100% loss of a food crop, even a luxury one, is an alarming thing to see though.
(I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)
They mention it as a critical factor, the disease is spread by insects, which is spread by hurricanes. The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes.
> Hurricanes turned out to be a vector for spreading the little winged bug. The wind carried the psyllid all over the state, dropping it off in hundreds of thousands of acres of groves.
> It was the perfect storm. And then, of course, there were the actual perfect storms, the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge: Irma, Ian, Milton, massive cells, all direct hits on the groves.
Regardless of the debate of whether climate change has intensified hurricanes, it seems odd to blame hurricanes for being a vector for spreading the bugs. Wouldn't the bugs have spread via wind even if it wasn't climate change induced hurricane winds?
Native Floridian here... although the story does not mention it central FL was hit in 2004 by hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne, and in 2005 was affected by Hurricane Wilma as well. Before that you have to go back to the 1940s before inland central Florida was affected by hurricane force winds. I think the article left that out for editorial reasons, the recent hurricanes in the past few years the article mentions really contributed to the final demise of the orange industry.
And yes, you used to be able to go outside at night in March and April smell the beautiful scent of the orange blossoms. It is certainly something of "Old Florida" that I miss.
Most edible bananas are seedless and most cultivars (human grown) bananas are genetic mutants with triploid chromosomes (though a few are tetrapolid or diploid). Getting them to produce functional reproductive structures at all let alone viable seeds is very difficult. There are ongoing efforts to cross-breed with their wild cousins and to preserve genetic diversity.
You can buy a Gros Michel banana from Miami Fruit, although they are quite expensive (almost $40 for a single banana). There are reviews of the banana on YouTube as well - I highly recommend the Weird Explorer channel if you want video reviews of all sorts of strange fruit.
Not to mention the loss of the 5-storey-tall coconut palms in South Florida back in the 1970's to Lethal Yellowing. The last resort treatment for these was tetracycline too but it did not save them. Plus they were not generally cultivated nor a local cash crop.
These things used form a massive canopy or grove naturally in so many places, towering over the homes and undeveloped properties.
Which is why so many old homes had the 3 inch thick white tiles on the roof. When one of the nuts comes down from up there it hits pretty hard, even if it's not a hurricane.
Almost all virtually gone, and what's there now is really all the result of landscaping efforts ever since, using resistant varieties that are quite dwarf by comparison.
This banana has reached mythical banana status because of rarity. The flavor of various tropical bananas is way better. Both Taiwan and India have many varieties substantially better tasting than Gros Michel.
Fascinating story. I wonder how much the earlier pesticides contributed to the problem. The story mentions it as a thing that was passing, and it makes me curious what would have happened without the pesticides.
I'm also curious whether the bugs would survive if you cut down every orange tree in Florida, waited a couple of years, and then planted new groves.
Meta: giving oranges as gifts at Christmas was a bit of a thing in the past when they used to be much more rare during winter: from Valencia/Ivrea for Europeans, and California/Florida in the US.
In the US the Interstate system helped reduce shipping and logistic costs across state lines, and so oranges became more prevalent and less 'special' post-WW2.
The Florida Orange was NEVER the Florida Orange to begin with.
Of note from the story: "...because it came from China, where oranges also came from in the first place." Technically yes but also no, what we have for the modern navel orange came from a mutation that happened in Brazil in the 1800s - 200 years after its introduction from China. The parent trees for literally the entire navel orange (aka Florida aka Sunkist orange) industry are in Riverside, CA, I see them every day driving to work. The now-deceased Queen of England used to get two boxes of oranges from those very trees every year.
FWIW, "navel" oranges are grown for eating, not for juice. People prefer them because they are easy to peel and they don't have seeds.
Juice oranges have a tougher, thinner rind that doesn't peel easily, and they have seeds. But they have better taste and more juice than navel oranges.
John McPhee is a great underrated non-fiction author, up there with the late Tracy Kidder. I particularly like McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy" about the physicist Theodore B. Taylor.
My great uncle got busted for peyote during the Canker Wars because Florida was going around to all the known growers and greenhouses looking for canker. Charges were dropped because they didn’t have a warrant. He also grew legitimate plants.
I just want to proudly, but also sadly, boast that Polk county once produced more oranges than the entire state of California.
Florida was a beautiful place not long ago, but a very peculiar and aggressively anti indigenous development is redefining it daily. Things have become so strange that squalid retention ponds qualify as wetland restoration.
I could rant for a while, but won't. Sarasota once produced more celery than possibly all states combined, and that helped us get through the Depression locally. But we sure did grow some oranges, and how wonderful the scent of orange blossoms are. It's something to behold.
I hate to say it, but I wonder if we are better off letting it go. The climate in Florida makes it a constant battle that’s managed by spraying tons of pesticides, fertilizer, fungicides, and antibiotics. It all runs off into the rivers and everglades and pollutes the water system eventually making its way to the ocean polluting it as well. It contributes to a host of serious problems for humans and the ecosystem. The antibiotic resistance alone is absolutely nuts.
I find these stories fascinating. Since it mentioned the orange originally came from China, I wonder if there are varieties that are resistant while still tasting good.
Quite the irony that a non-native species (oranges) are being decimated by another invasive non-native bacterial disease.
I was just talking about the devastation that invasive species and diseases have caused not just in America, even though it’s most acute there in many ways, but also all over the whole planet. I don’t think people really have any understanding for just how decimated the planet is due to invasive species, arguably including the rapacious types of humans were have.
Orange are just a tiny little example of that; forest the farms devastated the natural ecosystems, then monoculture and pesticides destroyed native species, and now a disease from the old country is devastating the invasive oranges. Left behind will be what, more luxury condos?
The whole article insists on the insect, but the conclusion is very different:
What did he think of all this, I asked him. What happened to the Florida orange?
“I think they killed it themselves, with chemicals. That’s a fact,” Gunther said. In my time in Florida, I’d found a more complicated story, but down here, everyone had their theories, their longing for citrus nirvana, and their anger at the loss.
“They sprayed so much chemicals, the damn grass don’t even grow here anymore—you can quote me,” Gunther said. “I knew it back in 1990. I said, ‘They’re sprayin’ so much chemicals it’s gonna be the end.’ And it’s the end.”
53 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 77.5 ms ] threadAs for Minute Maid, it has always tasted awful to me and it tasted worse in the 80s. The only packaged OJ I can stand is Tropicana.
You push the white lever and juice comes out. In grocery shops it's customer operated.
Of course they discontinued the angus burgers that actually used high quality ingredients compared to the McDouble / quarter pounders.
Now it’s $12 for a double quarter pounder meal and it tastes like shit. I only notice this because I just didn’t eat there much in the last 15 years. Meat quality and bun quality has clearly gotten worse. I don’t know how they keep growing sales.
Critic acid is probably the most potent tooth eroding dietary acid you can put in your mouth. This means anything lemon based is out, even sparkling water with lemon flavor. Orange juice is also out simply because of the sheer quantity.
Sugar based soda is terrible because it leads to oral dysbiosis, which is the leading cause of caries (bacterial acids) and gum disease. If you have persistent bad breath or bitterness in your mouth, you will probably need a probiotic treatment.
But here is the kicker: Diet soda is even more acidic than regular soda! Worse, avoid anything with orange or lemon added to it.
Although drinking water is the best thing you can do for your teeth, this doesn't mean you have to give up on juice or soda. It just means you should never drink juice or soda on its own. Always drink it in combination with a meal to soak up the acids. No matter what you eat, you should always wash it down with plain water.
(I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)
> Hurricanes turned out to be a vector for spreading the little winged bug. The wind carried the psyllid all over the state, dropping it off in hundreds of thousands of acres of groves.
> It was the perfect storm. And then, of course, there were the actual perfect storms, the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge: Irma, Ian, Milton, massive cells, all direct hits on the groves.
That's not correct: we have good data going back to 1851:
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.htm...
Search for "FL": hurricanes have been hitting Florida frequently for the last 175 years.
And yes, you used to be able to go outside at night in March and April smell the beautiful scent of the orange blossoms. It is certainly something of "Old Florida" that I miss.
These things used form a massive canopy or grove naturally in so many places, towering over the homes and undeveloped properties.
Which is why so many old homes had the 3 inch thick white tiles on the roof. When one of the nuts comes down from up there it hits pretty hard, even if it's not a hurricane.
Almost all virtually gone, and what's there now is really all the result of landscaping efforts ever since, using resistant varieties that are quite dwarf by comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight
I'm also curious whether the bugs would survive if you cut down every orange tree in Florida, waited a couple of years, and then planted new groves.
* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-we-should-br...
In the US the Interstate system helped reduce shipping and logistic costs across state lines, and so oranges became more prevalent and less 'special' post-WW2.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cul...
I've always wanted to try it in my own cold environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant#/media/File:Anita...
Of note from the story: "...because it came from China, where oranges also came from in the first place." Technically yes but also no, what we have for the modern navel orange came from a mutation that happened in Brazil in the 1800s - 200 years after its introduction from China. The parent trees for literally the entire navel orange (aka Florida aka Sunkist orange) industry are in Riverside, CA, I see them every day driving to work. The now-deceased Queen of England used to get two boxes of oranges from those very trees every year.
Juice oranges have a tougher, thinner rind that doesn't peel easily, and they have seeds. But they have better taste and more juice than navel oranges.
Florida was a beautiful place not long ago, but a very peculiar and aggressively anti indigenous development is redefining it daily. Things have become so strange that squalid retention ponds qualify as wetland restoration.
I could rant for a while, but won't. Sarasota once produced more celery than possibly all states combined, and that helped us get through the Depression locally. But we sure did grow some oranges, and how wonderful the scent of orange blossoms are. It's something to behold.
I was just talking about the devastation that invasive species and diseases have caused not just in America, even though it’s most acute there in many ways, but also all over the whole planet. I don’t think people really have any understanding for just how decimated the planet is due to invasive species, arguably including the rapacious types of humans were have.
Orange are just a tiny little example of that; forest the farms devastated the natural ecosystems, then monoculture and pesticides destroyed native species, and now a disease from the old country is devastating the invasive oranges. Left behind will be what, more luxury condos?
What did he think of all this, I asked him. What happened to the Florida orange?
“I think they killed it themselves, with chemicals. That’s a fact,” Gunther said. In my time in Florida, I’d found a more complicated story, but down here, everyone had their theories, their longing for citrus nirvana, and their anger at the loss.
“They sprayed so much chemicals, the damn grass don’t even grow here anymore—you can quote me,” Gunther said. “I knew it back in 1990. I said, ‘They’re sprayin’ so much chemicals it’s gonna be the end.’ And it’s the end.”