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Comment by morsch | Hacker News Reader

Having read the article I was left with the assumption that pretty much all commercial orange juice contained these "flavor packs". This does not seem to be the case: http://www.toxinless.com/orange-juice

Maybe don't buy your orange juice from subsidiaries of the Coca Cola company and Pepsico, as a starting point.

Also interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/2684u1/ysk_t...

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I maintain that toxinless.com page and usually buy the brands that claim to avoid flavor packs. It could be placebo, but I notice more flavor variation throughout the year with Costco and Whole Foods' brands, which I think supports their claims of using different sources of oranges throughout the seasons.

From your experience, is there one certain mid-price brand that stands out amongst the non flavor pack varieties?

I haven't noticed any difference, although I don't buy them frequently enough to make good comparisons.

I've considered switching to frozen concentrate for a lower-cost approach. I think it's likely to be promptly frozen after harvest, and may have lower pesticide levels due to smaller-scale production: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/chemical-residues-microbiol...

We've been drinking Uncle Matt's for a while now. It's usually about $4-5 where I live and that seems quite reasonable to me.

No flavor packs, enzyme and BPA free. And it's organic. And it actually tastes like oranges.

Or water. I've always found Dasani to have a suspiciously consistent and unique flavor and mouth feel.

not very surprising. Dasani is purified then mineralized

Dasani is tap water that has been purified with reverse osmosis and then remineralised.

It's rather strange as a Brit to hear that some bottled waters in the US are tap water. Here everything seems to be mineral water.

Dasani was launched in the UK in the mid-2000s. Was a bit of a marketing disaster and then was found to be contaminated and had to be recalled.

I'll just remark that for water, I do want to drink a pure chemical, possibly with a little bit of minerals in, if it can't be helped.

I hope you dont mean pure h2o because that's dangerous.

I am very curious about your comment. how is pure h20 dangerous?

H2O is highly caustic.

H2O is acidic, producing a significant concentration of H+ ions (arguably, the strongest reducing agent) at a concentration of 7 pH, or equivalently, 10^16 ions per liter of water!

Right, so why did I get downvoted?

Perhaps some people can't take a joke. FWIW, I upvoted you.

Distilled water (pure) has such a low mineral/salt level that it pulls important salts out of your cells. Your body is mostly water, but it's mostly salty water.

Well... not while eating a healthy diet.

Total dissolved solids must be under 500mg/L in US drinking water supplies, and the highly regarded NYC water system delivers water with less than 50mg/L of total dissolved solids. Most of that is sodium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium sulfate, classic tasty salts... all of which are readily available in foods.

See http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wsstate13.pdf for the 2013 water quality report; see table 1.

If you got distilled water instead, you'd notice the taste, but there wouldn't be a health problem.

Not really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_disti...

Distilled water is not "pure H2O." If I'm not mistaken there is only a few facilities in the world that can make pure H2O. Pure H2O has no flavor and will kill you if you drink too much of it. Distilled water or reverse osmosis machines only remove -most- things from water.

I believe there is an episode on National Geographic channel from the show "Going Deep With David Rees" where he visits a lab that makes Pure H20. He is only allowed to sip it. The episode was about creating ice without impurities. (it was found that pure H2O is not necessary to creating perfect ice, not is it made for human consumption.)

> [...] and will kill you if you drink too much of it.

Only if you don't eat anything at all with it.

Those little minerals are important. Purified water will pull minerals out of your system through osmotic pressure. http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap...

Just eat something with it. Anything.

Is this really true? Do you only drink pure de-ionized or distilled water? It is certainly important for some applications, but I don't know many people who find it palatable on its own. Pretty much any water you buy or get from your tap has minerals in it, and often they are beneficial to your health.

distilled water is pretty bad tasting, IMO. You can get it from pretty much any grocery store. I think you'll prefer good mineralized water. Moreover, I find the local tap water (Vancouver BC) to be above and beyond any bottled water I've ever had.

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