Frozen concentrate or straight-from-the-carton: which juice uses less energy to produce/ship/store?
Q: Jan Yaegar, Soldotna, Alaska
In the Essential Answer, we focused on different types of orange juice available to consumers, and settled on never-concentrated OJ as the greenest choice. After comparing the processing steps for each method—not-from-concentrate, concentrate, and reconstituted juice—we were better able to understand their carbon footprints. However, there are many breakfast beverage options, so why limit ourselves to orange juice? Besides, there’s more to choosing OJ than just its energy and climate impacts. We’ll delve into these issues now.
Orange juice is the most consumed unblended juice in the United States. And though it has fallen from more than half of the fruit beverage market share in the 1970s to about 35 percent today, it remains a strong and iconic staple. There’s something else special about orange juice: it’s really easy to make fresh at home—especially compared to juicing, say, apples or cranberries. As a result, we all know what fresh orange juice is “supposed” to taste like. That’s why NFC orange juice is so popular, even though it’s more expensive—and why fresh cranberry juice is so rare. And unlike many others, citrus juices don’t keep well at room temperature, as enzymes, high sugar content, and bacteria, yeasts, and molds all alter the flavor if the orange juice is untreated. Therefore, the juice has to be processed more to ensure flavor stability and taste retention.
If you wish to make your orange juice “greener” by squeezing your own oranges, there are several things of which to be wary. Unless the oranges are locally sourced, are in season, and are grown organically, juicing them at home is unlikely to be a much greener option. If you were to completely cut out any type of fertilization—the main emission source in the entire process—the carbon emission would still be nearly 5 pounds of carbin dioxide per gallon, compared to seven-and-a-half for NFC juice.
In the United States, we have grown accustomed to having all fruits available any time. But to be sustainable, we need to regain appreciation for seasonality. Depending on the variety, oranges are in season from October through May, but are at their peak in the winter months. As mentioned previously, transportation is not the main contributor to greenhouse emissions from orange juice, but it must nonetheless be considered. Transportation of processed orange juice uses a considerable amount of energy, but shipping whole oranges is even more environmentally and economically costly. One gallon of juice is produced from 13 pounds of oranges; the shipping differences are correspondingly large.
Additionally, when oranges are destined to be sold to the consumer whole, the trees they grown on are treated with more pesticides and fertilizers to ensure shelf-stability and visual appeal for consumers. Only 10-25 percent of oranges are grown for eating, with the rest going straight in to juice production. If you wish to have sustainable, high-quality, great-tasting, fresh-squeezed orange juice, it is quite possible, though one has to keep all these factors in mind.
So far, we’ve focused on the energy and carbon-emission side of orange juice, but it’s important to remember that there are many ways to measure how large an environmental impact something has. For instance, water footprints—measuring the amount of water needed to produce something—have gained attention as water scarcity becomes a more serious problem. To compare our cases, it takes about 11.8 gallons of water to grow and produce a gallon of orange juice, while apple juice scores at 14.9 water gallons for every gallon of juice, and tomato juice wins with only 3.7 gallons of water per gallon of juice. The disparity among these is due almost entirely to different irrigation needs. Too often, items are selected and touted as being “green” without a holistic view of the entire cradle-to-grave process, including all the important inputs and outputs.
As we try to grasp the bigger picture and lessen our impact, it is quite easy to forget our own small, personal choices, like why we drink orange juice in the first place. For many of us, it comes down to personal tastes (which cannot be quantified) and nutrition (which can be). According to the USDA Nutrient Database, a serving of not-from-concentrate or fresh-squeezed orange juice contains 207 percent of your recommended daily allowance of vitamin C; 21 grams of sugar; and only 0.5 grams of fiber.
Reconstituted orange juice has more sugar (27 grams) , the same 0.5 grams of fiber, and 164 percent of your recommended dose of vitamin C. Apple juice is also very sweet, with 27g of sugar per serving, yet only contains 46% of the recommended vitamin C. Grape juice has a whopping 38 grams of sugar, and just over a full daily dose of vitamin C (102 percent). Nonfat milk, meanwhile has 12 grams of sugar, only 4% of your daily vitamin C, but 30% of your calcium and 18% of your protein, which unfortified fruit juices cannot provide.
If you want to get the most nutrients for your sugar intake, however, it is best to go with whole fruits – an average orange has 12 grams of sugar, but yields 116 percent of your daily supply of vitamin C, and provides more fiber as well.
As we have delved into breakfast beverage choices, it is clear that there are some winners and some losers, depending on your criteria. The “greenest” drink choice is almost always tap water, but when you want a nutritional drink with breakfast, there are many options. For those of you, like me, who prefer cow milk in the morning, it may be time to consider the occasional swap to a less energy- and water-intense morning beverage. For those who drink orange juice from concentrate—especially ones that have been already diluted for you—it may be time to take other types of OJ for a taste-test drive.
ANGELA HAYES, '12, is a graduate student in Earth Systems.
