The Rise And Fall Of Orange Juice - Cheddar Explains

creating a liquid beverage out of fruits is one of the long-running staples of human consumption grapes have been turned into wine since 6000 BCE and they've remained key beverage in most societies apples have been turned to cider usually hard cider for nearly as long with the earliest recordings of its consumption emanating from Julius Caesar in 55 BCE and lemonade has been popular since at least 900 CE II all of these fruity concoctions caught on because besides their flavor and the persuasion of the alcoholic content they had utility they were seen as being nutritious wine and beer supplied clean calories in kept longer than non-alcoholic juices they were safer to consume and contrived nutrients that clean water just didn't notably absent from that list however is orange juice or any variations on orange related beverages that's because surprisingly most people didn't like orange juice and they especially didn't like the idea of pairing it with other foods so how did orange juice become a staple of the American breakfast and what has caused its most recent demise spoiler alert it's not just because it's unhealthy in the early 1900s a coalition of farmers known as the California fruit growers exchange was doing something drastic instead of nurturing the growth of the orange trees they worked so hard to plant over generations they were chopping them down in droves why an overabundance of oranges the Coalition had more citrus than they knew what to do it and they were in desperate need of a solution to the surplus news of this waste of resources made its way to one of the hottest marketing men at the time Albert Lasker he saw an opportunity to make a big impact on the orange industry after being hired his first suggestion was for all the different farmers in the California fruit growers exchange to unite under one brand name Sunkist yep that Sunkist this is their origin story and that's why their logo is of an orange marketers United them to make selling the fruit easier his next suggestion was to invent the idea of orange juice to sell to the American public making one glass of orange juice requires between two to three oranges so getting people hooked on drinking multiple oranges rather than eating just one at a time would solve their overabundance problems on top of that it allowed them to start selling juice extractors doubling the number of products they sold and profits they made and to beat out any competition he also suggested that they give out free Sunkist branded spoons in exchange for returning 24 orange wrappers for a brief second Sunkist became the largest purchaser of flatware in the United States the slogan drink in orange is attributed to boosting sales of oranges by 400% so it's clear that this advertising campaign worked and it worked well it revolutionized the way Americans consumed oranges and propelled it to being a much-loved fruit the advertising convinced people that it was a nutritious drink that should be served with every meal and people drank it up it was only a matter of time before it became a staple at the American breakfast table at least four Americans who are close to these farms they could enjoy fresh oranges and canned orange juice freely but for people further away it wasn't as enticing though pasteurization and other new technologies that made canning juices possible popped up around the same time orange juice never held well it confused chemists for a long time but the truth of the matter was that as soon as orange juice was packaged the essential oils within it began to do great what was left was a bitter brown terrible tasting liquid that bore no resemblance to the fresh-squeezed orange juice it once was this was in stark contrast to apple juice and tomato juice which traveled well and kept their flavors thus making them the default choices to pair with you breakfast at the time so even in the early 1900s when oranges and orange juice popularity was explosive it didn't shift national consumption habits quite yet that problem wouldn't be solved until World War two the brutalities of World War 2 came in many forms one of the less discussed ones is that soldiers were frequently getting scurvy due to unbalanced diets aka they were vitamin C deficient this causes fatigue sore limbs achy bones gum disease that could lead to your teeth falling out and much more it was a serious issue with a simple solution the easiest way to curb vitamin C deficiency is through eating or drinking citrus so in 1942 the US Army offered a lucrative contracts to anybody who could figure out how to preserve the flavor and nutritional value of orange so that it would keep during travel scores of people tried but to no avail until 1945 when USDA scientists from Florida invented juice from concentrate the idea was that if you evaporated the liquid from fresh juice you'd be left with a concentrated mass of the fruit from there you could add a little bit of fresh orange juice thus returning some essential oils and rehydrating the mass this kept the sweet citrus flavor preserved for much longer than previously possible it worked so well that the army ordered 500,000 packages of orange juice from concentrate to be sent out to soldiers but by the time it was ready the war had ended not wanting to let all that effort go to waste the makers pivoted and decided to sell orange juice from concentrate to the public and it didn't take off but people people were definitely buying the new orange Rees from concentrate in the first years they sold just under three million dollars worth of it but on a national level this was not a great success from a net gross perspective Minute Maid was losing four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on it once again in hopes of launching the citrusy drink to Great American Heights they turned to marketing Minute Maid gave an undisclosed amount of money and twenty thousand shares in the company to singer Bing Crosby in exchange for commercials and endorsements of orange juice from concentrate in 1949 the ad started playing on the radio five days a week within three years the brand was making thirty million dollars off orange juice from concentrate the lucrative relationship between Crosby and Minute Maid continued for years with his ads singing this was the beginning of the truly explosive popularity of orange juice across the country since this type of orange juice could keep its flavor while traveling it wasn't limited to just being enjoyed by people close to farms across the country people started drinking it every morning with their breakfast after all it's according to courts consumers went from eating under 8 pounds of orange juice per person in 1950 to over 20 pounds per person in 1960 and that demand just kept growing by 1970 90% of Florida's oranges were being used for orange juice production orange juice consumption just kept growing to become one of the most popular beverages in America so what happens when you get to 1998 what shifted in America's love affair with the fruit juice that caused its sudden continual drop year-over-year well a few things first let's get the obvious one out of the way orange juice isn't as good for you as it was originally marketed to be you've probably heard this argument before so I'm not gonna spend too much time on it the broad strokes of it are that orange juice is basically a lot of sugar as we now know sugar isn't good for you in high quantities seeing as it's easy to drink sugar without thinking about it as consuming sugar many people have stopped drinking fruit juices in general to counteract them but it's not just about health concerns Americans are more frequently skipping breakfast altogether according to the american journal of lifestyle medicine 89% of people ate breakfast daily in 1970 in 2016 according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that number has dropped down to just at 75 percent since drinking a cold glass of OJ is most associated with breakfast time skipping the meal all together often means skipping having orange juice with that kind of frequency but across the board one of the biggest reasons that people are steering away from orange juice is that it keeps getting more expensive though it's been expensive before OJ became really cheap from 1990 to around 2005 since then it's been on the rise with dips here and there but also reaching the most expensive height its ever reached around 2016 but The Fault doesn't necessarily fall on farmer's shoulders they need to charge more because there's been a nationwide orange shortage that's in large part due to an insect borne infection known as citrus greening according to the University of Florida it hasn't just affected the u.s. it's also hit hard in Asia Africa the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian Peninsula and Brazil it's a disease that causes trees to develop yellow blotches it affects the root of the trees and everything that comes off of them the oranges that grow may fall from the tree long before they're ripened and even if they don't there's just way less of them they are usually smaller and they have a bitter salty taste which is not what people want out of arches or orange juice in 2013 NPR reported that virtually 100% of Florida's orange groves were affected by citrus greening since Florida was one of the nation's biggest producers of oranges the limited patches of good oranges became a much more valuable commodity farmers spent more money harvesting and that cost got shifted to the consumer with all that context this graph makes a lot more sense the rise and fall of orange juice was seemingly inevitable when you factor in all the difficulties it's had to face but the future might not be so bleak according to IHS markets agribusiness intelligence the shortages are coming to an end both Florida and Zil have had increases in production and that could be a light at the end of the tunnel with more oranges prices might return to lows that make sense of the consumer that's only if supermarket chains decide to pass on the savings seeing as the man keeps falling year-over-year however that might not end up being as simple as it sounds are we at a time right before the next big marketing scheme causes another explosive pop and popularity or these are love affair with the popular citrus drink coming to an end sound off in the comments below if you like this video please give it a thumbs up it really helps out and if you're interested in learning more about the topics that we cover today we left all of the sources that we use researching in the description [Music]

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 887,264

Rating: 4.8648615 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, explainer, orange juice, orange, how is orange juice made, the dark side of orange juice, is orange juice healthy, 100% orange juice, juice, rise and fall, OJ, vitamin c, scurvy, oranges, orange juice sugar, citrus, drinks, history of oranges juice, apple juice

Id: dCLuP0ky68I

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TheDeadman_72]

TL;DW: America, advertisers and your parents lied to you.