America has fallen out of love with orange juice.
Sales dropped almost every year for the last decade. Last year, orange juice sales hit their lowest level in at least 15 years, according to Nielsen. Over the same period, per-capita consumption fell roughly 40%. And this year is looking to be another rough one for big orange. Orange juice’s precipitous decline is a big deal. For nearly five decades, the sweet beverage made its way onto more and more American breakfast tables nearly every year. At its height, almost three-quarters of American households bought and kept orange juice in their refrigerator, according to Alissa Hamilton 2009′s book Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice. But shifting American eating habits—which stigmatize sugar and leave little time for breakfast—and surging juice prices have done significant damage to American demand.
Concentrate, Concentrate
America has lived without orange juice before. Until the late 1940s, orange juice wasn’t even a widely available commercial drink. The little orange juice Americans imbibed was either fresh-squeezed, or boiled and then canned—a process which helped preserve the juice, but also made it taste terrible. After World War II, a group of scientists changed the American orange juice landscape forever. Determined to find a more palatable intersection between preservation and flavor, these scientists developed a new process roughly based on the one they saw used to dehydrate food during the war effort. Instead of boiling the juice, they heated it lightly until water evaporated. Then, they’d add a touch of fresh orange, which gave the concoction a “fresh” taste. Orange juice “from concentrate” was born. As was the industry’s marketing push. The product was a hit. Per capita orange juice consumption jumped from under eight pounds per person in 1950, to over 20 pounds per person in 1960. Florida’s production of concentrated juice leapt from 226,000 gallons in 1946 to more than 116 million in 1962, according to a report by agricultural economist Robert A. Morris. By 1970, 90% of Florida’s oranges were being used to make orange juice and the vast majority of that was from concentrate.