2006/07/27
Orange juice is that unique American food commodity that elicits wide-ranging levels of consumer preference unlike any other. I am often befuddled and amused by the unblinking OJ devotion of much of the American populace to the point where there are numerous iterations of this trusty breakfast beverage to suit just about the fussiest OJ fanatic.
Such discernment for orange juice alone blows my mind. Bear in my mind that I was raised with the notion that the most suitable breakfast beverage is a cup of tea with milk and sugar. Very English, very unflinching. In fact, my father brought his own stash of tea bags to my college graduation breakfast reception because he didn't want some "orange juice nonsense" in the morning. But I digress....
A recent trip to Safeway confirmed my long-standing notion about the importance attributed to orange juice by the American populace. Tropicana--considered the world's leading producer--offers no less than 12 (!!!) different types of fresh orange juice to its American customers: Original, Homestyle, Calcium + Vitamin D, Grovestand, Grovestand Calcium, Light 'N Healthy Calcium, Light 'N Healthy with Pulp, Fiber, Low Acid, Healthy Heart, Healthy Kids, and Immunity Defense.
I thought "all-natural" juice is healthy already, so why it needs to be any "lighter" and "healthier", I fail to fathom. But what really irks me is how some people can be fussy about pulp. Over the years, I've noted the reactions of various roommates, colleagues, and friends at the mention of "pulp," and am stupefied at their expression of obvious distaste, because...hey..it's just JUICE! I find it hard to understand how seeing pulp in your glass of juice would sully the aesthetic element so much that you'd be averse to drinking it. C'mon now, do you really want orange juice to have the consistency of apple juice??
Personally, I prefer pulp. The more, the better. I like the texture element, and I've been known to sometimes "munch" through mouthfuls of juice. Yes, I'm a bit of an odd one.
So 'fess up, what's the dealio with the rapidly advancing no-pulp brigade? Where do you stand on the pulp vs. no-pulp issue?
Posted by Natasha D'Souza on 2006/07/27 @ 22:16 | Comments (19) |
Comments
Post a new commentI'm pro-pulp, but I was anti-pulp until a couple years ago. I gradually transitioned through low-pulp up to full pulp. Now no-pulp seems very fake to me.
Florida's Natural, Minute Maid, and Tropicana all have popular variations of the same kinds. I usually get the Calcium/Vitamin whatever kind.
Posted by: Barzelay at July 28, 2006 6:29 AM
I'm definitely a no-pulp girl. I simply prefer not to chew my orange juice.
Strangely enough, I am very pro-pulp when it comes to grapefruit juice. What can I say, it's fun being wildly inconsistent. :-)
Posted by: bettyjoan at July 28, 2006 9:06 AM
I was expecting some kind of debate over orange juice commodities/futures and how they bring about exploitation of some third-world OJ-producing nation. So this was a pleasant, light-hearted surprise. Im a 'low-acid' (tastes sweeter), 'less pulp' (less crap stuck in my teeth) type person. But i completely agree with the 'too much selection' point.
Posted by: Imran at July 28, 2006 9:47 AM
i'm a no pulp kinda gal. however, i'm with you on this..i'm not an oj person. i think it reminds me of my college days of drinking vodka and oj. blech.
Posted by: rverde23 at July 28, 2006 10:18 AM
I'd have to say I go for the pulp when I'm in the market for orange juice.
favorite brand - Simply Orange (PULP)
Yeah, it's expensive orange juice, so what? I like to think I'm worth every penny. In fact, I consider myself a high performance machine, which requires certain high performance fluids. So I guess what I'm saying is - Simply Orange is the high-test, ultra-premium of the orange juices.
mark ponders whether or not the president likes pulp...
Posted by: Mark W. at July 28, 2006 2:05 PM
I've only ever had Simply Orange without pulp, which meant it was not a contender for me. I'll have to give it a shot again.
Posted by: Barzelay at July 28, 2006 3:36 PM
Judging from the comments thus far, no-pulp and pro-pulp are about even, with finicky banker divas like Imran squatting in the middle.
Simply Orange with pulp is my OJ of choice. It gladdens me that it's almost always on sale when I go to the grocery store. I'm looking forward to the day when they'll come up with blends. Orange-Mango-Passionfruit anyone? Until then, I'll have to rely on Ceres and Looza for my non-OJ kicks.
Posted by: Natasha D'Souza at July 28, 2006 3:45 PM
OK, well, first things first -- the roommate comment must have been directed towards me. I am a strictly NO PULP girl. Now, there is a perfectly logical argument for this.
1) If you have ever worn braces, a retainer, or worse, a permanent retainer, enough said. You don't want that crap getting caught in there because if it does, it is never coming out. I had a permanent retainer for 1 year and braces for 3.
2) I'm a texture person when it comes to food. While you, Natasha, may think that it's fun to have a texture like pulp, I wholly disagree. I believe someone also said that they do not like to chew their OJ -- that's me.
3) I'm a Florida girl and I know my OJ. There is no benefit to the pulp other than getting in the way of a perfectly enjoyable glass of juice.
Don't get me wrong -- I can still be friendly with those pulp drinkers and actually am quite grateful for taking it off my hands (have you ever seen the Extra Pulp OJ?), but I stick to my guns. I am and will always remain Tropicana Pure Premium Original No Pulp Girl (shaken, not stirred, with or without vodka, thank you).
Now, as far as the other choices we have these days for light, calcium, etc., the OJ we buy in the grocery store has added sugar, so light would be good for those watching their caloric intake (otherwise, I say "go for it") and quite frankly, people should be drinking their glass (or two or three) of milk a day for the calcium, so whatever, those people are on their own.
Posted by: Sara at July 28, 2006 4:41 PM
Clearly, it is BECAUSE orange juice is so omnipresent in the American diet that so many varieties exist in supermarkets. And when you think about it as a mealtime staple--somewhat akin to rice in India or cheese in France--it makes sense that a huge variety exists. Reinforced in calcium, blended with banana and grapefruit, premium extra virgin double churned, and so forth.
Now, the fact that there is a market for depulped orange juice confirms the absolute *phobia* that Americans have when it comes to recognizing the SOURCE of their food. Eww, this chicken once had bones? Gross, these grapes have seeds? How ritually unclean this juice is, awash in pulp and fiber.
Posted by: Alex at July 30, 2006 4:40 PM
I disagree to some extent to the last comment...Im not sure the fact that there is a market for depulped orange juice confirms any sort of phobia Americans have for recognizing the source of their food.
While I would agree that many people do not like recognizing the source of their food, I think this "phobia" applies way more to the consumption of meat than fruits or vegetables. People don't like seeing shrimp heads, chicken bones, or other identifying factors of life because many people are so detached from the reality that they are eating something that used to be alive that any sort of upfront reminder can be shocking and fracture the illusion that many take part in when they eat meat.
However, I do not see how fruits and vegetables apply to that. People eat fruits and vegetables whole all the time. Orange slices are served in chinese restaurants with the peel still attached. The baked potato is a great american sidedish and thats about as sourced as it gets. I find it hard to believe that any significant number of people would be pulp-haters merely because it reminds them that their juice came from oranges. I think comparing peoples' distaste for seeing remnants of a sentient lifeform to peoples' distate for pulp is like comparing...well, apples and oranges.
The reason I hate seeds in grapes is because they are a pain in the ass. You can't just grab a grape or two and pop them in your mouth and enjoy them. You have to deal with the seeds and find a place to spit them out. The reason I don't like pulp in my OJ is because I have a heavy aversion to any sort of drink containing solids. The pearls in bubble tea gross me out as well as the balls in the short-lived Orbitz drink.
Posted by: Adam Rugg at July 31, 2006 6:29 AM
I agree with Adam that this phobia is more applicable towards meat than towards fruits and veggies.
However, I think a more powerful reason for many people's aversion to having their meat meal possess any memory-triggering vestige of the life form it came from has to do with cultural conditioning as opposed to just being plain particular. In many agrarian communities, meat is often a staple food and oftentimes people are consuming animals that they once treated as members of the household. If there is any underlying guilt, they're not culturally hardwired to notice or dwell on the fact that they're eating Lizzie--the craziest chicken in the henhouse.
Ah, how I would love to gambol about the food-cultural anthropology milieu.
Posted by: Natasha D'Souza at July 31, 2006 12:53 PM
I'd like to propose a very different reason for the aversion to seeing meat before it is cooked, or in its natural state. I think the aversion is part of a healthy instinct not to consume food that could be unhealthy. It's one of those accumulated cultural wisdom things where we don't really understand how it gets passed on. Same as our aversion to the smell of feces. There is nothing, as far as I know, that is objectively stinky. Things are stinky because we've developed an aversion to their smells. Similarly, I think we've developed an aversion to uncooked meat.
Posted by: Barzelay at July 31, 2006 7:43 PM
Extrapolating David's logic of accumulated cultural wisdom, most people are averse to the sight of blood so explain to me why some folks insist on meat that is partially or almost completely rare??
And David--oh my goodness--you brought in the word *faeces* in a discussion about food. It makes sense...erm...down the line. But still...wow. Hilarious.
Posted by: Natasha D'Souza at July 31, 2006 9:43 PM
I think I may have not spoken clear enough in my last post. I never stated that I felt people were repulsed by reminders of life when they eat meat because they were just plain particular. I said that it fractured the illusion that most people take part in when they eat meat. To elaborate on this, I feel that a large portion of the American populace is utterly removed from the concept that what they are eating used to be a living, breathing animal. Oh, they know in theory that what they are eating used to be alive but it seems like our culture makes a large effort to seperate the idea of say, chicken the animal, from chicken the meat. It would be quite easy to eat many types of meat for most of your life and have no idea what the actual animal the meat came from looks like. For example, I fell in love with shrimp very early on in life. I did not know, however, what an actual, full-bodied shrimp looked like until years after I declared shrimp my favorite food.
I think this ability to separate the meat from its source is due to the fairly black box nature of meat production. Most people just go to the store, pick up a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and walk away. Meat has merely become a commodity just as easy to obtain and deal with as vegetables. Its readily available, stripped down to nothing but what's edible, and conviently packaged. This makes putting most meats on an equal footing with fruits, vegetables, and grains extremely easy and allows for the loss of all associations with the animal it originally came from. Thus, when one is confronted with this association it can be quite displeasing.
Posted by: Adam Rugg at August 1, 2006 4:08 AM
"Similarly, I think we've developed an aversion to uncooked meat." ~Barzelay
Clearly, if you've ever witnessed me eat a steak dinner (and I know that you have), you know that I have no such aversion. If there was an instruction that would command a chef to cook my meat less than rare, I'd use it. Always.
Overcooking beef (the good cuts, anyway) not only ruins its delicious flavor, but the charring has been documented to generate various dangerous carcinogens.
Not sure how this discussion turned from OJ to red meat, but I dig it anyway. Great thread!
Posted by: bettyjoan at August 1, 2006 1:15 PM
Or perhaps it is that, for those of us who have developed such a taste, that a taste for near uncooked meat is a modern cultural conditioning. After all, today we eat raw meat by choice, not by necessity. People used to eat raw meat because they had no way to effectively cook it (think medievil pirates on a boat with cured raw meat), or they simply didn't know how to do it right. We even have an organ that used to be just for digesting raw meat. We insist on raw meat because we have the convenience of choosing to appreciate its unique taste an texture. I love myself some beef tataki.
As for OJ, I am like David in that I used to dislike pulp but am now pro-pulp, because I developed this thing called taste. Being from Florida, I get to enjoy fairly cheap and ridiculously fresh OJ year round, and I'm grateful for that. In fact, I don't even require it to be breakfast-time to drink it. I'll drink it anytime and with almost anything, except for after brushing my teeth. Juse how expensive is OJ in other parts of the country, anyway?
Posted by: Chris Santoro at August 2, 2006 12:30 AM
Anyone else like their steak served rare with extra-pulp OJ poured over it?
Posted by: Adam Rugg at August 2, 2006 2:38 AM
What an excellent article - was just having this conversation with a friend that prompted me to google "who likes pulp" and eatfoo(d) is 4th on the first page - nice work!
I, too, prefer my OJ full o' pulp. And as for the reason behind Tropicana offering 12 varieties, think about it....if they have 12 different types of OJ, people are going to sift through the 12 different types and eventually pick one, thereby ignoring all of the other brands that only have one or two...people like to have choices, and they tend to go with companies that offer them more of those...that is, however, just a Hoser's contention....
Nice blog! Check out mine at www.districtofcontention.com
Posted by: Hoser at July 11, 2007 10:31 AM
Is the orange juice by Tropican made from pure oranges or just concentrate that is so unhealthy to drink.?
-OOJD
Posted by: Pradeep at June 10, 2008 4:26 PM
