Noose the Juice?

Tropicana sued over ’100 percent pure and natural’ orange juice claim

FDA halts orange juice imports to test for pesticide

The media takes such stories as these and whimsically thrusts them through our televisions, newspapers, and internet sources rather hastily, almost as hastily as we will forget them within a week or two. Falling short, these stories only pierce our perception of what is healthy, hence why only a short-term interest is stirred. It is their failure, to expand and encompass a much more basic principle, that can potentially make us choose an unhealthier item over one that would be considered a better choice.

One story describes how orange juice is being heavily processed to produce that shelf-lasting “orange” flavor and the other refers to the FDA’s stance to thwart a banned substance (fungicide) from compromising the health of America. The focus of this article (my article) is not oranges and nor is it carbendazim, the banned pesticide, but rather your ability to make a health conscious decision.

Whether it is temporary or longterm, these stories do influence us a great deal. Maybe tomorrow when you are out grocery shopping you will opt out of buying your family’s weekly supply of O.J., maybe… Although, you will continue to load the rest of you family’s highly prized foods, beverages, and whatever they consider the rest of that stuff into you cart. The O.J. story has only mildly affected your purchases today.

It was my family that alerted me to this story and it was me, only me, that acknowledged their bold maneuver to quickly scratch it off their food list. In actuality, my family rarely ever buys orange juice, so more or less, it was this occasional rarity that was reduced to an indefinite never. Orange juice is supposed to be natural and have a life-sustaining quality to it, at least that is the image advertised to us. It is also supposed to look and taste like freshly squeezed oranges, although it never does (?)!

How can we drop an item that has a natural ingredient hidden somewhere in it at the drop of a headline while we have no desire to remove those items derived from no natural ingredients whatsoever from our daily chewing and gulping. I by no means want you to you keep consuming these items. I want you to see beyond them and to avoid the temptation to jail a few when it is the many that perpetually commit the crime.

For instance, after reading or hearing about these two recently publicized stories, would you choose the sweet orange mix Tang over some “natural” orange juice (the FDA has no formal definition of the term ‘natural’). One does fine all on its own as a dry powder on a shelf while another necessitates some processing to counteract the natural wear of the small supply of real oranges within its mix. And unless you are an individual concerned about whether your food supply is organic or not, you can eliminate the banned fungicide as one of the determining factors.

You are left with a powder verses an ounce of realness. The powder is nothing but a creation while the juice has been tampered beyond recognition. Most people will eliminate the orange juice because most people are irked by the idea that something considered and advertised as being wholly natural is nothing of the sorts. Most people will side with an item that is 100% tampered over one that it is 75% tampered, but only if the second is at least somewhat real.

“…but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.” -Daniel Kahneman

So, is it Tang or a glass of O.J. for you? -This is a trick question…

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