The weirdest part to me is that the flavor in many fruit juices is artificial (or "natural", but that can also mean what most people would call "artificial", because our labeling laws are designed to enable fraud). Pasteurization and such take so much of the flavor out, that they have to add it back in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice#Not_from_concentr...

They’re also mostly apple and possibly pear juice because those are so cheap, with other flavors/colors added.

Grape juice is absolutely not normally grape juice plus possibly sugar. That would be too expensive.

>Grape juice is absolutely not normally grape juice plus possibly sugar.

How sure are we on that? It has been a while, but I recall something like Welch's tasting like grape juice.

https://www.welchs.com/juices/100-percent/concord-grape

Seems like theirs actually is. But that’s also likely why it costs more.

Apparently even walmart's great value grape juice that's half the price is apparently 100% grape juice. Given how much Welsch's seems to be pushing the grown in America angle while a location isn't mentioned at all for great value, I think it's a fair bet that they've found some source of super cheap grapes somewhere to let them get that 100% grape claim

Welch's purple grape juice is concord grapes: "In the United States, 417,800 tons were produced in 2011.[3] The major growing areas are the Finger Lakes District of New York, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Southwestern Michigan, and the Yakima Valley in Washington.[4]"

You can use it to make wine just fine, if you're in to that sort of thing.

If i had to guess the white grape juice is whatever the green seedless variety in california was for decades from the late 70s on.

Can you elaborate? I don't see your point.

If I read "no artificial colours or flavours", I don't presume nothing has been added, because that would be really naive. So if the ethyl butyrate they re-introduce to the juice came from fruit, I see that as natural, and a pretty reasonable thing to do. Is that what you're contending?

> It's better to just consume the fruits.

Allegedly orange juice in the grocery store was invented in the mid 20th century as a way to sell more oranges.

Sure but it is also about storage and density. Oranges have peels and don't stack that well and can be damaged. Extracting the value into a mostly rectangular container allows for the same product in an easier to distribute form factor. The old tubes of concentrated orange juice took that to an extreme by also removing most of the water and freezing them.

Also most OJ is concentrated during shipping and then diluted with water during bottling, allowing for low transportation costs.

They also homogenize the flavor of juice and concentrate by stripping the oxygen and then adding in brand-specific flavor packs at the end. This doesn't have to be reported as a separate ingredient because it all comes from oranges. [1]

1: https://gizmodo.com/dirty-little-secret-orange-juice-is-arti...

And sold by that homophobic lady

Also a side effect of creating industrial orange juice is the actual flavor is removed and has to be added back.

https://gizmodo.com/dirty-little-secret-orange-juice-is-arti...

> Freshly squeezed fruit juice is already not amazing,

Which fruit juice are you finding not amazing? To me orange, grapefruit juices are pretty amazing and quite a different experience from eating the raw fruit (which I like too).

I’m guessing they mean not amazing as in “not very healthy”.

I miss the Orange County, CA oranges. I had a tree in my yard as a kid, it was a dwarf, and it produced insane amounts of the best oranges i've ever had.

Oranges now are all navel oranges, which i find tougher, less sweet, and more tough fleshed.

As an aside, the oranges i am talking about are exactly tennis ball sized and can be fired out of a tennis ball cannon - to about 2 blocks away.

It depends where. In France a juice that is "100% juice" must be made from squeezed fruits (any concentrate is forbidden).

It is till a lot of sugar and eating the fruit is way, way better but at least there are no artificial whatever or added sugar.

Does that prevent the juice maker from using their standard strategy to load stuff up with sugar: grape juice?

Yes. When you have "100% orange juice" it means that the juice is squeezed from oranges and that's all (you can have the with or without pulp version, that's all).

You could have grape juice in (obviously) 100% grape juice, or in mixtures where the percentage of each juice (again, squeezed from fruits) is listed on the standard components label.

We di have juices from concentrate, but it is then clearly labelled as such. Or juices that are only part fruit, and it is labelled as such too.

The main thing was to make sure that when the juice says 100% it has to be only this and from squeezed fruit.

Ah, okay. In the US it's standard to call a product 100% juice, no matter what the fruit, by mixing with grape juice to provide the sugar.