01-01-2020, 06:00 AM
testcase wrote:
I'm currently in central Florida. OJ prices here are crazy high (IMHO). Sheez, the damned fruit is grown here...
When you drink supermarket orange juice, you're drinking a carefully tailored bit of modern chemistry.
OJ is stored in giant vats. Without pasteurization and storage in these cold high-pressure vessels with a reduced oxygen environment, the OJ would spoil in a week or so. Instead, it can be stored for over a year with a few significant consequences: Of note, the flavor disappears and the color tends towards brown.
As a result, chemists formulate flavor and color packets tailored to those brands/trends that they want to highlight, including seasonal variations.
What I'm getting at is that it hardly matters where the oranges come from anymore or whether a particular harvest goes bad from frost or whatever. It all comes from a tank. And pricing is more about how far you are from the vats than how far you are from the groves.