While reading about the grapefruit aroma story (below), I came across this article about engineered orange juice.
Did you know that "fresh squeezed" smell when you open a carton of orange juice comes from a chemical "flavor pack" made of stuff not exactly, er, fresh and natural? That "heart-healthy" drink they push on a.m. television commercials is really a chemical soup which incidentally, apparently, also contains a bit of concentrated orange juice.
Yuck.
A little more googling led to this article from the Agricultural Research Service, the research arm of the USDA. The flavor and smell of your reconsituted O.J. consists of over 40 terpenes, alcohols, esters, and aldehydes, which, last time I checked, don't actually grow on terpene, alcohol, ester or aldehyde trees.
Dr. Duke (see other postings), formerly of the ARS of the USDA, says that while the chemical constituents taken or evaporated out of the orange juice was natural, we as consumers have no way of if the chemicals added back in are natually-sourced or cooked up in a laboratory.
But somehow it just doesn't sound appetizing.
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