What killed the Florida orange? | Hacker News Reader

What killed the Florida orange?

slate.com

170 pointsdanso182 comments

https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food...

The John McPhee article that the author references was expanded into a book, and it's a great read for anyone that finds this story interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Oranges-John-McPhee-ebook/dp/B005E8AN...

Seconded. Interesting read.

John McPhee is a great underrated non-fiction author, up there with the late Tracy Kidder. I particularly like McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy" about the physicist Theodore B. Taylor.

He may have little name recognition, but he's considered, at a minimum, one of the most important, influential, masterful nonfiction writers of his generation.

This reminds me of the collapse of the Gros Michel banana variety, also due to disease. Near-100% loss of a food crop, even a luxury one, is an alarming thing to see though.

(I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)

They mention it as a critical factor, the disease is spread by insects, which is spread by hurricanes. The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes.

> Hurricanes turned out to be a vector for spreading the little winged bug. The wind carried the psyllid all over the state, dropping it off in hundreds of thousands of acres of groves.

> It was the perfect storm. And then, of course, there were the actual perfect storms, the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge: Irma, Ian, Milton, massive cells, all direct hits on the groves.

Do you really believe parts of Florida never got hurricanes until recently?

To be charitable, they merely pointed out what the article said, even if it is obviously, objectively false.

It's not objectively false, people just can't read.

> the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge

You're making the parent's point.

These recent storms only got to Cat4.

Similar storms hit the aforementioned areas in 2004-05 including Cat4.

How do these revelations not contradict the article?

I have no idea what Florida's weather patterns are

Yes, people are jumping in because neither did the author, and it seems like that's core to the author's argument.

>The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes.

That's not correct: we have good data going back to 1851:

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.htm...

Search for "FL": hurricanes have been hitting Florida frequently for the last 175 years.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adjusted list of weather events which caused the equivalent of a billion dollars or more in damages, and the upward trend is pretty clear — it's like dismissing the impact of the machine gun because people used to have long rifles.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/state-summary/FL

You get a similar problem with saltwater intrusion where, yes, it's never not been a phenomenon but now it's affecting a lot more people than it used to:

https://southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/initiative/climat...

Hurricanes do more dollars in damage because we're richer and there's more capital near the coast.

The idea that climate change caused hurricanes which spread insects is not impossible but seems unlikely. I don't think the statistical methods exist to prove it.

Valuations have skyrocketed and insurance premiums are insane.

I love the stories about people in FL self-insuring now because it's cheaper to repair drywall than pay premiums.

OK so the grandparent's comment was clumsy.

Now, I see a slate of historical hurricanes in FL from 2004-05 that hit the Ridge area. This contradicts the article as these weren't baby storms.

The issue is clearly the rise of this blight bacteria that has made the groves less resilient to storms and has weakend production.

The meta reason is a missunderstanding of nature. Even the industry basically considers it a tamed beast of burden, while environmentalist usually consider it as a sort of gaia godess raped by industrial mankind. Nature is war and fast adaption of wha works. The trees war the grass for shade. And every mono culture, be they cloned crab or planted orchard, is a giant dice inviting disaster with every yearly throw. And on that scale adaption and transportation yields rewards for those animals and plants transporting anti-man properties fast. We are running a adveserial breeding program for anti-human critters. And when they exist, as they do and did in all places with longstanding human populations and agriculture- they take the invite on speed dial. We simply are dragged back into the eternal conflict. We always where a part of nature and this is how it feels like to be a part of that. Counter measures? Lets ask the statisticians.. anything that eats dice throws of the advesaries.

The Netherlands has been fighting nature for a thousand years. Inevitably one day we'll lose but it's a worthwhile endeavour.

How does that contradict the article? It seems like it supports it if those were the events which helped harm the previously-strong citrus industry - those storms are part of what hit at the peak, starting the decline.

Did you not see the article claim that the grove areas hadn't been hit by storms before/as big as some listed in the last decade?

Just not true with their phrasing.

edit:

for clarity, the author referenced 2017+ vintage hurricanes as if nothing of their intensity had hit before: Irma (2017), Ian (2022), Idalia (2023), Helene (2024), and Milton (2024). None of these got beyond cat 4. Meanwhile there were certainly other hurricanes that were cat4 that hit the groves in 2004-05.

> That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level.

This is the conventional wisdom, and it is completely falsified by the actual data that I linked to. I wrote a python script to go process and plot it, and there has been zero increase in Cat 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms hitting the US since 1851 (there are only 4 Cat 5s listed total).

Try it for yourself.

As @zdragnar pointed out below, people are talking past each other whether it's claimed in the article v. whether the article is right.

It seems many are jumping to biases about climate change without reviewing the data as you did.

And the article should've been written with more nuance.

Yeah, exploring data is always interesting, sometimes super interesting, and it's also healthy to approach things with a mixture of open-mindedness and skepticism - a sort of zen habit you can get better at with practice. Ideas serve me, not the other way around.

This is obtuse. The assertion was a deviation in the areas of Florida experiencing hurricane penetration. This is a localized effect. You’re discussing the gross effects of an entire nation, in this comment, of an entire state in the prior. However no one is discussing Florida or the US. They’re discussing the orange growing regions of Florida, which is a region that has not historically had hurricanes, but has had them recently.

It’s like saying the UV radiation hitting the earth is the same as it was historically so therefore an ozone hole in Australia didn’t exist and cataracts can’t be higher there.

So what you are saying is that, yes there has not been an overall increase in hurricanes hitting the US over the last 175 years, but climate change has been specifically and precisely steering the hurricanes towards the orange growing regions of Florida in recent years, and is therefore to blame for the crop failures.

You have to diagnose a problem correctly in order to have a chance at solving it.

Well now I'm thoroughly confused. Because your data does seem to overturn the conventional wisdom.

Do actual climate scientists claim we're getting more, and stronger, hurricanes now than we did before?

Climate science is largely based on models, not just raw data.

Climate science is also highly political, and seems to have a big economic impact…

> Do actual climate scientists claim we're getting more, and stronger, hurricanes now than we did before?

The general line is that climate change has probably increased the amount of rainfall associated with hurricanes, possibly the severity of hurricanes (due to sea level rise and warmer water) but there isn't good evidence that it has increased the frequency of hurricanes.

I've heard climate scientists that describe climate change as a "more energy in the system" phenomenon. The overall system for now is mostly the same, but every event inside of it has "more energy" than it had before.

For hurricanes this seems especially problematic because the historical categorization system is based on radar-observed width of the storm. "More energy" means that the categories stay the same over time, but every category is getting worse (more rainfall, heavier/faster winds, further travel, higher damage).

As with so many statistical phenomenon, it's also a reminder to be careful what metrics you are trying to compare. Comparing just the hurricane categories to historic values may just be the exact sort of wrong metric, for these "more energy" concerns.

> the historical categorization system is based on radar-observed width of the storm

Now I'm confused again, because OP used data going back to 1851. We didn't have radar in the 19th century.

Ah, sorry. I suppose it is only fair to mention using the wrong metrics and getting the exact metric wrong myself. Today it is radar-observed wind speed and historically there were other less efficient means to test or at least estimate wind speed.

The original point still stands that Hurricanes are defined by only the one metric and other metrics have room to grow bigger as the category stays the same:

> The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based only on a hurricane's maximum sustained wind speed. This scale does not take into account other potentially deadly hazards such as storm surge, rainfall flooding, and tornadoes.

From: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php

By the way, I know I saw someone point out the same data at least 5 years ago - probably more like 10.

At some point the discourse changed from “just because it’s a cold winter doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t happening” to “every hurricane/wildfire is due to climate change” and it’s ridiculous.

I honestly think a lot of young people don’t realize that while climate change is probably real our weather and variability hasn’t changed that much - yet, at least.

> I honestly think a lot of young people don’t realize that while climate change is probably real our weather and variability hasn’t changed that much - yet, at least.

"Much" is one of those vague words, where it's true and false depending on your meaning.

If you live on any of the transition zones between climates, as I did growing up, it is directly visible: My experience of snow in the south coast of the UK was almost entirely in the early years of my childhood, and family photos of my older siblings show that they had even more than me. My parents had experiences of even deeper and longer cold, with ponds freezing completely solid, not just a layer of ice on the top.

I can easily imagine someone who lives in the parts of the US where all the winter urban snow photos come from, may not notice the loss of a 1-2 centimetres out of 100cm of snowfall, but when it's your last centimetre, it's much easier to spot.

I’m asserting nothing other than the article asserted the pattern of hurricanes changed to target the orange growing region more often and that you’re using gross geographic data to discuss an orthogonal point. However you make it seem like the assertion is nature intentionally targeting orange groves rather than shifts in patterns implies patterns shifted from where they were to where they were not hitting - this is definitional in the concept of a pattern shift. Your evidence for your assertions are unrelated to that topic of pattern shift, indicating you’ve misunderstood the problem to diagnose.

It’s great you’re bringing data to the table but you’re overstating its validity to the assertion dramatically.

Finally I’d note you’re asserting an analysis you’ve done without providing the data, method, or any reproducibility. So while you might personally feel you’ve done an accurate job, your assertions are citing exclusively yourself, against hidden methods, making it of no more quality than a puff piece article citing research without citation that you’re arguing against.

I did provide the data in my first comment, here it is again:

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.htm...

The analysis is easy: copy and paste the data from that link into a new text file, then write a python script that goes through it and counts the number of Cat 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 hurricanes that make landfall per year (the "Highest Saffir-Simpson U.S. Category" column), and then make the plots: I used gnuplot. You can then do fits to the data if you'd like, but the flat trend lines over the last 175 years are obvious.

I encourage you to not trust me and to do it yourself, but I'm also happy to share my script, let me know.

As far as the hurricane trajectory trend lines go, they are clearly highly stochastic: check out e.g. both the spaghetti plot predictions for various storms from previous years, and ask google for a map of where they grow (grew...) oranges in Florida.

Regardless of the debate of whether climate change has intensified hurricanes, it seems odd to blame hurricanes for being a vector for spreading the bugs. Wouldn't the bugs have spread via wind even if it wasn't climate change induced hurricane winds?

The hurricanes spread the insects rapidly over a very large area, within a few days. With so many hurricanes coming so frequently the areal coverage overwhelmed what could have been a response.

Native Floridian here... although the story does not mention it central FL was hit in 2004 by hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne, and in 2005 was affected by Hurricane Wilma as well. Before that you have to go back to the 1940s before inland central Florida was affected by hurricane force winds. I think the article left that out for editorial reasons, the recent hurricanes in the past few years the article mentions really contributed to the final demise of the orange industry.

And yes, you used to be able to go outside at night in March and April smell the beautiful scent of the orange blossoms. It is certainly something of "Old Florida" that I miss.

Did this banana have seeds!? I've never seen one, but it looks awful. They were actually good?

I never had one, but apperently they tasted much better then the current variety (which IIRC, is in danger of suffering the same fate)

IIRC, there was actually a huge marketing push because people wouldn't each the current variety ?

PS - the old one didn't go 100% extinct, and you can get small numbers of them from specialty growers. Youtube has videos of people trying them (1)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ZtvpBoXzI

No, it didn't have seeds either.

Have you ever had "banana flavor" candy that doesn't really taste like bananas? The flavoring is Isoamyl acetate, and I've heard suggestion that people called it banana flavor because it tasted more like Gros Michel. After switching to Cavendish banana the flavor name no longer made as much sense. Not sure how true it is though.

Someone in the thread linked to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ZtvpBoXzI, where Hank Green tells this same story... and tries a Gros Michel banana and says it doesn't taste like "banana flavor"

I had them. They are wonderful, and even creamy.

I still love tiny red bananas though, they are so sweet!

Very true.

The bananas I had as a child back in 1960 had the strong flavor of isoamyl acetate along with the natural bouquet of related flavors in lesser amounts.

I hated it.

The space-age banana popsicles were even worse because they were nothing but isoamyl acetate.

Most edible bananas are seedless and most cultivars (human grown) bananas are genetic mutants with triploid chromosomes (though a few are tetrapolid or diploid). Getting them to produce functional reproductive structures at all let alone viable seeds is very difficult. There are ongoing efforts to cross-breed with their wild cousins and to preserve genetic diversity.

You can buy a Gros Michel banana from Miami Fruit, although they are quite expensive (almost $40 for a single banana). There are reviews of the banana on YouTube as well - I highly recommend the Weird Explorer channel if you want video reviews of all sorts of strange fruit.

Or the death of the American Chestnut the generation before, once so common its causually in a Christmas song, now all but gone.

Not to mention the loss of the 5-storey-tall coconut palms in South Florida back in the 1970's to Lethal Yellowing. The last resort treatment for these was tetracycline too but it did not save them. Plus they were not generally cultivated nor a local cash crop.

These things used form a massive canopy or grove naturally in so many places, towering over the homes and undeveloped properties.

Which is why so many old homes had the 3 inch thick white tiles on the roof. When one of the nuts comes down from up there it hits pretty hard, even if it's not a hurricane.

Almost all virtually gone, and what's there now is really all the result of landscaping efforts ever since, using resistant varieties that are quite dwarf by comparison.

A similar thing happened in France in the 1850s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight

This banana has reached mythical banana status because of rarity. The flavor of various tropical bananas is way better. Both Taiwan and India have many varieties substantially better tasting than Gros Michel.

The Florida Orange was NEVER the Florida Orange to begin with.

Of note from the story: "...because it came from China, where oranges also came from in the first place." Technically yes but also no, what we have for the modern navel orange came from a mutation that happened in Brazil in the 1800s - 200 years after its introduction from China. The parent trees for literally the entire navel orange (aka Florida aka Sunkist orange) industry are in Riverside, CA, I see them every day driving to work. The now-deceased Queen of England used to get two boxes of oranges from those very trees every year.

Makes the disease even more confounding, as one would assume that orange trees evolved alongside it. Normally invasives are destructive because the species has never seen it before.

Citrus greening wasn't documented in Asia until the early 1900s so it's possible they didn't evolve alongside it.

FWIW, "navel" oranges are grown for eating, not for juice. People prefer them because they are easy to peel and they don't have seeds.

Juice oranges have a tougher, thinner rind that doesn't peel easily, and they have seeds. But they have better taste and more juice than navel oranges.

I'll pick a bone on the flavor comment because a good Washington Navel is probably one of the best tasting oranges in existence.

I guess it might depend on the variety then. I've had navel oranges that were almost like damp cellulose to eat. Very little juice or flavor.

You got a bad/dry one. Happens all the time with home grown and less frequently with commercial products. My backyard trees have improved, but only with fairly intensive upkeep.

The flavor coming right off the tree can be truly candy-like given optimal conditions. After tasting the best ones from my own tree, I had the revelation that so many things that are "orange flavored" are mimicking navels specifically.

"FWIW, "navel" oranges are grown for eating, not for juice."

I'd beg to differ - navel oranges produce the smoother flavor and are what get used in making Tropicana. Always has been that way.

I just want to proudly, but also sadly, boast that Polk county once produced more oranges than the entire state of California.

Florida was a beautiful place not long ago, but a very peculiar and aggressively anti indigenous development is redefining it daily. Things have become so strange that squalid retention ponds qualify as wetland restoration.

I could rant for a while, but won't. Sarasota once produced more celery than possibly all states combined, and that helped us get through the Depression locally. But we sure did grow some oranges, and how wonderful the scent of orange blossoms are. It's something to behold.

Florida is a democracy. Florida voted for leaders who ignore these problems because of “woke”.

Floridians deserve the results.

I will grant clemency for anyone who was born there and isn’t wealthy enough to move out.

I will grant 10x hate for anyone who moved there for the politics and complains about the results.

Born here. And for me, the government is the pine flats, the oaks and palmetto scrubs, the springs, the sea, the spirit of the Timucua, sandhill cranes, thunderstorms.

If Billy Bowlegs or Geronimo come back, I'll vote for them. I'd consider voting for someone who actually respected this place, but I'm not sure anyone does. I've been to nearly every state, and some other lands, but there's no place finer. I'm pure Florida man.

Yup, the things that outlast any government are what means the most.

I'm a native too and I'll add a data point.

It's people who moved to Florida that voted the destructive operators into leadership positions, once they outnumbered the natives.

We all know this too well. The last 30 years has been similar to watching my closest friend be ravaged by terminal illness. It hurts, bad. All I can do is aim for a small farm (proximal to protected forest) someday, if I can ever afford so.

What I can say is that the terrain is being pushed too far and closer to a breaking point than most realize. One anomalous back-to-back hurricane series could reveal this rather harshly. Florida is wetlands, not a shopping center. We can't just expect the bays to swallow everything. Someday we could have airboat options for visiting Disney. Pestilence, contamination from flooding, excessive heat on an isolated power island, mucho etc - yeah, we could realize soon.

> I've been to nearly every state, and some other lands, but there's no place finer. I'm pure Florida man.

Ok, then you have the capability of leaving and haven’t. I judge you heavily.

Everytime I hear a southron bastard crow about secession I agree with them. Especially when I see the morons making up maps of the “national divorce” that give New England the gas fields of Pennsylvania.

I hope bugs bunny manifests into reality and cuts Florida off of the mainland.

My great uncle got busted for peyote during the Canker Wars because Florida was going around to all the known growers and greenhouses looking for canker. Charges were dropped because they didn’t have a warrant. He also grew legitimate plants.

He sounds like a great uncle!

Potentially.

He fought in WW2 but by the time I knew him his mind was gone mostly due to PTSD. I miss my great aunt and uncle

Meta: giving oranges as gifts at Christmas was a bit of a thing in the past when they used to be much more rare during winter: from Valencia/Ivrea for Europeans, and California/Florida in the US.

* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-we-should-br...

In the US the Interstate system helped reduce shipping and logistic costs across state lines, and so oranges became more prevalent and less 'special' post-WW2.

There are (were?) also dedicated "juice trains" running from Florida to various destinations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train

Also the passenger train immortalized by Johnny Cash's "Orange Blossom Special": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWz5NzY3Zck

"Rouse and Wise wrote the Orange Blossom Special song as a fiddle tune."

With the characteristic doppler effect of a rapidly passing train horn simulated by the fiddle player.

That Orange Blossom Special, doesn't run through Waldo any more.

Tangerines (or satsumas) over Christmas were a treat in the north of England when I was a kid.

Granny Smith and Pink Lady were also considered treats when it came to apples, compared to the usual golden delicious or braeburn.

They also had a wild system for growing citrus fruit in trenches in the USSR.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cul...

I've always wanted to try it in my own cold environment.

I've seen Youtube videos of people growing citrus, among other things, in colder climates in "greenhouses" made of plastic sheeting heated by a thick layer of woodchips which slowly decompose and give off heat.

Fascinating story. I wonder how much the earlier pesticides contributed to the problem. The story mentions it as a thing that was passing, and it makes me curious what would have happened without the pesticides.

I'm also curious whether the bugs would survive if you cut down every orange tree in Florida, waited a couple of years, and then planted new groves.

Quite the irony that a non-native species (oranges) are being decimated by another invasive non-native bacterial disease.

I was just talking about the devastation that invasive species and diseases have caused not just in America, even though it’s most acute there in many ways, but also all over the whole planet. I don’t think people really have any understanding for just how decimated the planet is due to invasive species, arguably including the rapacious types of humans were have.

Orange are just a tiny little example of that; forest the farms devastated the natural ecosystems, then monoculture and pesticides destroyed native species, and now a disease from the old country is devastating the invasive oranges. Left behind will be what, more luxury condos?

Anita Bryant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant#/media/File:Anita...

Sugarcane and pineapple used to be the biggest agricultural products in Hawaii. Now they're gone.

What caused this in Hawaii?

IIRC for sugar it's because of cheaper cane sugar substitutes (corn syrup and sugar beets) out-competing the cane sugar grown in Hawaii.

So, market conditions then, and not some kind of blight or parasite? Wasn't sure.

Sugarcane was due to cheaper sources. Pineapples I think was due to economic factors as well. Basically, one of the most isolated population centers in the world adds a lot of cost due to shipping things in and out and being a US state imposes means that labor isn't going to be dirt cheap.

Also Jones Act: ships from Asia can't pick up cargo from Hawaii on the way and drop it in mainland US. This means that shipping between Hawaii and mainland is much more expensive then it needs to be.

The Jones act has to be one of the most destructive stupid laws that we have.

Not really, it makes sense from point of view if you want to have an empire, you need a merchant marine to move things around by sea on ships you control.

Jones Act doesn't accomplish what it's supposed to do but that's mainly because it was weak protectionism. Many other countries just shovel government money into their shipbuilding at rates that would probably make many just as angry.

I can believe it would make lots of people just as angry. But I really doubt policies like the ones from China or South Korea have an impact near as large as the US's.

It doesn't help that the US is full of non-contiguous territory separated by deep ocean. Other countries have similar laws but aren't as impacted.

The Jones Act doesn't affect shipping prices all that much. If you look at the shipping lanes, the shortest and best shipping routes between Asia and the west coast travels by Alaska. Going to Hawaii adds multiple days and thousands of miles to the route. Also, the harbors in Hawaii aren't equipped to handle the large container ships used for trans-pac shipping routes so the cargo ships couldn't stop in Honolulu even if they wanted to. Finally, the Jones Act allows ships coming from Asia to stop in Hawaii to drop off cargo and then continue on to the west coast to unload the rest of their cargo, this doesn't really happen.

Studies seem to disagree.

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...

Also the OP suggested that Hawaiian production is on decline so shipping from Hawaii to mainland is the issue.

The grassroots institute is an explicitly right-wing/libertarian organization that advocates for their preferred policies. So take their studies with that in mind.

However, the Jones act doesn't really have much of an impact compared to the significantly higher cost of labor in the US compared to brazil and india. Also the US got rid of alot of sugar subsidies, and import controls which essentially made sugar growing aside for some specialized situations infeasible.

Sugar cane required annual burning of the fields, which became really unpopular. That and labor practices.

They still grow millions of pineapples

That cropping technique had been superseded by no burn methods. They're used extensively in Queensland Australia. It's called "green harvesting"

The history of Hawaii, the Dole family and pineapples is worth a documentary. I'm sure one must already exist

gift link: https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food...

I have to disae javascript to read the article. The article was submitted to the internet archive and, surprisingly, I also had to disable javascript there https://web.archive.org/web/20260420211512/https://slate.com...

https://archive.ph/ZnfSC

I find these stories fascinating. Since it mentioned the orange originally came from China, I wonder if there are varieties that are resistant while still tasting good.

Wikipedia suggests that there are no naturally resistant strains, although there is some genetically modified work ongoing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease#Contro...]

More interesting was a suggestion that a more holistic approach may have merit, i.e. improving overall soil/grove health with less intensive methods. [https://citrusindustry.net/2019/04/02/citrus-grower-sees-suc...]

I hate to say it, but I wonder if we are better off letting it go. The climate in Florida makes it a constant battle that’s managed by spraying tons of pesticides, fertilizer, fungicides, and antibiotics. It all runs off into the rivers and everglades and pollutes the water system eventually making its way to the ocean polluting it as well. It contributes to a host of serious problems for humans and the ecosystem. The antibiotic resistance alone is absolutely nuts.

The other thing that I can't help but think has seriously hurt the industry is that, between concentrate and flavor packs, almost all supermarket orange juice tastes like garbage. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is, of course, the benchmark. If you ever taste Minute Maid back-to-back with fresh-squeezed, well, you probably won't be buying Minute Maid again any time soon. It just doesn't even taste like oranges. There are a few brands available (the expensive ones, of course) that do come close enough to actually taste like oranges, but when the mass-market product falls that far down in quality, you can't help but wonder how anyone still wants to buy it.

I haven't had minute maid in a long time, but I enjoy Simply, and Sam's club house brand is pretty good as well.

Nothing like a fresh Florida orange, though. I used to know a secret tree in a public preserve that had the best oranges known to man.

I might drive down this winter and see if it's still there.

It may surprise you to learn that Simply Beverages is owned by Coca-Cola, who also own Minute Maid.

Simply is definitely the superior of their product lines.

The process to make never concentrated orange juice logistically viable involves removing all the oxygen from the juice so it stores well. Now you can take a seasonal product like oranges and sell the juice the entire year around. Unfortunately removing the oxygen also removes most of the flavor. so what the bottlers do is add an engineered "flavor package" when they bottle the juice to add the flavor back.

I am halfway convinced that flavor wise frozen concentrated orange juice is "closer to the tree" than the "never concentrated" stuff. Nothing on fresh squeezed. But that is the price we pay to have a non-seasonal product.

Is it really non-seasonal any longer now that there are reliable international markets in southern hemisphere to support?

I mean, they don't get teleported to the point of sale so most of the rules still apply to long distance shipping.

As a chemical engineer we study the process for making frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ). IIRC you feed the juice into low pressure flash distillation that splits off most of the water. Problem is that many of the volatile compounds go out the top as well, and the resulting concentrate is blah. So you feed back in about 10% raw juice, pack the sludge in cans and freeze em.

The fun part was trying to find good estimates for viscosity for the two phase orange sludge in order to properly size the piping and pumps. Treating food products like chemical production is its own weird sub-specialty.

Salutes on the post. After hearing the flavor tricks they have to jump through to make "never concentrate" I was sort of hoping the freezing process of FCO kept more of the original flavor. But it sounds like it does not.

The industrialization of food is really what enables our modern way of life. But it slightly horrifies me every time I learn more about it.

"Cold pressed" seems to be what you want for keeping flavor. All the good supermarket juices are cold pressed.

Couldn't they keep the aromatics, as they would be the first to come over, and then add them back?

Those get captured and sold separately.

Back before Starbucks bought them, Evolution was magical. They sold cold-pressed orange juice in the store that tasted fresh. I lived by that stuff!

From the store bought orange juices, I think the Trader joes one is the closest to tasting like fresh-squeezed.

A local grocery store used to make their own fresh squeezed using a refrigerator sized stainless steel machine that might as well have been a Rube Goldberg machine with its winding metal wire chute full of oranges which led to the squeezing head. That thing was kept right in the aisle next to the refrigerator case they kept the juice in. It was the best orange juice though expensive as it was over 10 bucks a quart when the store finally closed. I tried to call and buy the machine but got nowhere. Turns out the owner died so the family closed up the shop and liquidated it.

As for Minute Maid, it has always tasted awful to me and it tasted worse in the 80s. The only packaged OJ I can stand is Tropicana.

pretty much everywhere in the Netherlands has contraptions like this, small though, not fridge sized. Didn't see orange concentrate anywhere.

Minute maid actually tastes better than Tropicana to me (can't stand that brand), been getting one from Spain lately at Costco (Don Simon) that's pretty good, less sweet.

Standard in France and Belgium as well.

I have never liked Tropicana or Minute Maid, but about... 30 years ago? We used to have a brand called Fruvita that actually tasted good but it got bought by Tropicana, the taste changed, and we just stopped buying orange juice.

A Sam's Club in my area has started selling fresh squeezed orange juice. It's quite delicious. (And yes, it's pricey.) I've looked around at many other stores (including places like Whole Foods) and nobody else seems to be doing this.

Tropicana used to get high marks from me. The only brand I buy in a grocery store is Natalie’s.

Fresh squeezed is amazing.

Or you can buy a citrus juicer and make it yourself. A couple or three oranges and a few seconds in the morning.

OXO Good Grips runs about $20, it's a squeeze-by-hand option. You can get a wooden reamer, or spend about or upwards of a Franklin for something complicated, though I find simpler is saner.

I have both an old school glass dish reamer as well as a wooden reamer. Use it for making lemon/lime iced tea (using actual tea, not that powered sugar crap) for the summer months.

No need for huge and complex machines, this is all you need if you have a grocery shop or a coffee shop: https://www.pepebar.com/c/1956-0_thumb/M%C3%A1quinas%20de%20...

You push the white lever and juice comes out. In grocery shops it's customer operated.

I've always found it pretty scary how some mass-market foods have diverged almost completely from the thing they are actually representing. The weird milky vaguely-citrus flavor of chemical that comes in the box labeled "Orange Juice" is just one of many examples. For another example, go taste a grape and then taste some so-called "grape juice." It's actually mostly apple juice, and doesn't even remotely taste like grapes.

Dark grape juice is made of concord grapes which are the primary variety which is made into jelly, jam, juice, and in general grape flavored things. They don't taste like grocery store eating grapes, they're a different variety.

THEY ARE DELICIOUS when you can find them, one of the things I miss about living in California was the brief season you could get a concord grape on the vine to eat. I have never seen them outside a bay area farmer's market, late summer if I remember correctly.

I never understood why grape flavored things taste the way they do until I (accidentally) bought Concord grapes.

That said, "delicious" is definitely a matter of opinion.

I love concord grapes so much. Im eagerly awaiting their annual return to the farmers market (early September). I love them so much the vendors know to get me and tell me when they are here. I don't understand why the demand for them is small.

I also deeply miss the limes. The halfway-to-yellow actually ripened limes that didn't even show up some years.

If I knew for sure when they would be available I'd certainly make a trip across the country to eat those limes.

Those lines are just hanging out on the trees around for most of the year! Best storage for citrus is on the tree.

Concord grapes are pretty common in season in New York State, and I’m assuming the states nearby.

It’s the boiling frog problem. Consumers gradually become used to lower quality. 15 years ago, McDonald’s was good. You knew it was bad for you but it was so good that you just didn’t care and it was a great cheat meal. You could get an Angus Delux meal for $7. https://wealthgang.com/mcdonalds-prices-throughout-the-years...

Of course they discontinued the angus burgers that actually used high quality ingredients compared to the McDouble / quarter pounders.

Now it’s $12 for a double quarter pounder meal and it tastes like shit. I only notice this because I just didn’t eat there much in the last 15 years. Meat quality and bun quality has clearly gotten worse. I don’t know how they keep growing sales.

The Big Arch patty is better than the angus was. Their baseline burgers have always been crap.

After the whole debacle with the CEO not wanting to bite into it, I didn’t have high hopes. I’ll have to check it out.

It was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.

I love cutting grapefruit in half and digging out chunks because at the end you get to drink grapefruit juice the way it was intended, as a reward for eating grapefruit.

Do you eat the seeds and poop them out somewhere nice? I think that’s what the grapefruit intended.

You could make the argument that the grapefruit succeeded in its intention already, by being so good that humanity tends and manages whole groves of grapefruit trees

No that's silly. Everyone knows that when you eat a seed like that, the plant grows in your belly.

this made my day

as a kid I was thoroughly disappointed learning this not being real. probably more so than finding out about Santa.

fun fact: be careful if you're on any medications.

Especially any immune suppressant medications.

drinking grapefruit juice is a flex and signals you have a normally functioning brain

Most artificial sweeteners have metabolic side effects, and lead to weight gain.

You’re probably better off drinking cane sugar soda because it is more filling than HFCS soda.

Anyway orange juice is probably better still. At least it has some vitamin C and maybe trace fiber in it.

no metabolic effects from sweeteners, wish you lot would stop moving the goalposts on why sweeteners are unhealthy:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12098100/

The abstract says the study is useless:

> However, given this study applied a heterogeneous ASB formula, it could not adequately consider the role of specific artificial sweeteners. Further research is needed to evaluate the potential effect of different artificial sweeteners and their doses on health.

it's also not the only study, just one example, besides that's standard boilerplate CE so as not to assume liability.

Similar to the reports that talk about health problems with sweeteners. Not enough good data to be informative and actionable.

This just in, licorice kills dogs. Once in a while it kills people too. (affects insulin production, and aldosterone causing blood pressure effects then downstream effects on blood potassium and kidneys)

>Most artificial sweeteners have metabolic side effects, and lead to weight gain.

I have not seen a single double blind study show this in the many decades low calorie sweeteners have been consumed (in normal amounts).

What I have seen is study after study showing the harms of consuming too many carbohydrates (the amounts contained in normal consumption of juice due to quantity of sugar).

> Most artificial sweeteners have metabolic side effects, and lead to weight gain.

So does sugar. Everything ever credibly published on the effects of artificial sweeteners say four things:

1) everything else held equal, artificial sweeteners unequivocally reduce weight gain vs consuming equivalent sugar because sugar is 100% empty calories

2) some artificial sweeteners (e.g. sucralose) may increase appetite vs equivalent sugar, causing you to possibly eat more depending on which ones you consume

3) various artificial sweeteners may have non-weight-related negative effects on the body related to cardiovascular health, gut health, and so on

4) sugar definitely has a whole bunch of non-weight-related negative effects on the body related to cardiovascular health, gut health, and so on

Sugar is not just empty calories. Your muscles need glycogen, which is produced from carbohydrates—including sugar—to function.

Simple sugars are particularly effective at restoring glycogen stores after intense cardiovascular workouts.

It seems you may not know what the phrase "empty calories" means, so, let me help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_calories

Lumping simple sugar in with complex carbohydrates as equally beneficial because they're both carbohydrate molecules is horrendous prevarication. And bringing up "intense workouts" at all, which I'm sure you very well know is demographically an extreme outlier scenario, in a conversation about weight gain, is the most hilarious kind of derailment.

There seems to be little to no evidence of any negative effects from just about any artificial sweeteners. I mean shoot, Aspartame immediately breaks down into some of the most common amino acids in the body. There's no biological mechanism for it to do anything negative.

Sugar, on the other hand, has very well known and studied health risks at the concentrations we see in a lot of modern 'staples' - soda and juice included.

This is what happened to me. I would guzzle orange juice. I couldn’t start a day unless I had a giant glass of it. Then I found out that it was just all sugar and not much else. I don’t think I’ve had a glass of the stuff in over a decade.

They advertise vitamin C, but that's in tons of other things. Even used as a preservative.

Yes, the way I've heard it put is eating an orange is fine, but drinking a glass of juice is like eating an entire orchard.

What if you make fresh squeezed OJ at home, eat the leftover pulp and skins first, and then drink the juice? I wonder if that has the same glycemic impact as eating an orange.

Why not just eat the orange. I can't be the only one who finds eating the pulp alone icky. Like chewing on a damp rag.

How do you put vodka into an orange?

Open the orange, remove the giraffe, put in the vodka.

(Variation on: <https://www.smart-words.org/jokes/giraffe-refrigerator-eleph...>.)

Alternatively, use an apple-corer to breach the peel, pour in a shot of vodka, and drink with a straw, much as with watermelon:

<https://www.thespruceeats.com/vodka-watermelon-recipe-417556...>.

The Irishman taught me how to put vodka into a watermelon.

The juice is still much less healthy. It’s the act of having your guts extract the nutrients that makes fruit healthy, because it reduces how quickly your body absorbs it. Once you make it into juice (or a smoothie) by mechanically digesting it prior to consumption, you’ve removed the need for that.

You forgot about chewing. Nobody swallows oranges in chunks. You chew and that presses out the juice. Drinking the juice and then eating the pulp is no different although it does sound silly. At that point just eat the damn orange like a normal person.

> Drinking the juice and then eating the pulp is no different although it does sound silly. At that point just eat the damn orange like a normal person.

It's less silly than taking a shot of vodka and eating an orange. Tastier too.

Drinking alcohol is silly.

No doubt. We all need some silliness in our lives.

This sounds like a good idea for a science experiment and a following paper!

Orange juice is indeed pretty terrible stuff.

Critic acid is probably the most potent tooth eroding dietary acid you can put in your mouth. This means anything lemon based is out, even sparkling water with lemon flavor. Orange juice is also out simply because of the sheer quantity.

Sugar based soda is terrible because it leads to oral dysbiosis, which is the leading cause of caries (bacterial acids) and gum disease. If you have persistent bad breath or bitterness in your mouth, you will probably need a probiotic treatment.

But here is the kicker: Diet soda is even more acidic than regular soda! Worse, avoid anything with orange or lemon added to it.

Although drinking water is the best thing you can do for your teeth, this doesn't mean you have to give up on juice or soda. It just means you should never drink juice or soda on its own. Always drink it in combination with a meal to soak up the acids. No matter what you eat, you should always wash it down with plain water.

It's not who killed it, it's what killed it and the answer is greed.

For anyone not aware, the most proximate cause of the disappearance of "Florida Orange Juice™ " is the Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus bacteria. Monoculture is often blamed, but the bacteria affects all citrus trees - oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, etc.

Those are all the same plant. Hybrids of Citrus. A monoculture.

In the past, "monoculture" was used to describe things like "one particular variety of banana"[0] - e.g. the Gros Michel banana fell to fungus and was replaced by the Cavendish banana, which was not susceptible to the same fungus but is now also falling to a similar fungus, and will be replaced by another banana variety. In fact, they're not just the same species but closely related cultivars - both part of the AAA banana cultivar group (triploid cultivars of Musa acuminata).

The article in Time Magazine puts it succinctly:

> There’s a name for this situation: monoculture, the practice of fostering just one variety of something.

In the case of bananas (and many other crops, plants, decorative trees, etc), a diversity of varieties would have minimized the spread and impact of pathogens, while providing a more diverse selection of nutritional content and flavor for consumers. But that doesn't seem to be the case for citrus trees.

I don't think that "monoculture", as it has been used or the past 50+ years, is the appropriate concept to apply to this citrus greening. Perhaps we could criticize something else - like tree density? Or perhaps monoculture is the problem, but in a much broader sense - maybe a grove with 10% citrus trees, 10% corn, 10% soybeans, 10% berries, 10% apple trees, etc...would create a biome that was hostile to the citrus greening bacteria in such a way that it couldn't thrive and spread. We have no data to support that hypothesis at this time though.

0: "What We Can Learn From the Near-Death of the Banana" https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/

Monoculture can also mean just one species.

Citrus isn't one species but hybrids of citrons, mandarins, pomelos in Citrus genus. It isn't like cabbage that produces multiple cultivars. Citrus genus is supposed to be diverse cause they do hybridization in wild.

According to the article, the reason why the bacteria was so quickly fatal for Florida orange trees is that their roots were weakened by a sequence of major hurricanes and by many years of excessive pesticide use.

These are all contributing factors. Mono cultures mean a single problem with pests can rapidly spread. Using pesticides means you wipe out a lot of the local wild life; including any predators that might go after the insects that spread the pests. And if you grow the exact same variety of the same produce, they are all going to be vulnerable to the exact same thing at the exact same time. Using more pesticides just adds to the problem and eventually pests become resistant anyway.

A solution here could be growing a larger variety of produce, using organic farming practices, crop rotation, etc. Pests tend to specialize in specific things and most pests have natural predators. So, if you stop killing those they'll help keep outbreaks in check. And if you rotate crops, you take away the food source for the pests. And if you grown a variety of different things, it won't all get sick at the same time.

Looks like premature collapse of a monoculture due to excess stress, much of it a result of human effort.

I don't think monoculture is relevant for once; the bacteria affects all citrus trees: oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, etc.

Yeah, not just one or two susceptible varieties.

But when you have nothing but the perfect host for the infection, in incredibly massive proportions as far as the eye can see, a little bacteria goes a long way.

Which can be even worse :(

But those are all the same plant - hybridized Citrus.

Are you saying it looks like a "monoculture" to you too?

Maybe there's not really accurate terminology for this.

Either way we do have to allow more often for the occasional passerby who is fully convinced that adding all that tonnage of glyphosate for so many recent years was a supernatural event, and not the result of any human initiative :\

On top of all that natural disaster, it wouldn't take as much of a straw to break the camel's back. Or the other way around; on top of all the industrial excess, the same natural disaster can have a more devastating effect.

Or maybe it's not thought to be premature at all, but long overdue.

If somebody was thinking that though, you figure they would leave a comment to that effect.

It's not monoculture, it's Florida's climate being the perfect environment for the psyllid that causes the disease. California's drier, less humid climate has been more resilient to the bug.

The whole article insists on the insect, but the conclusion is very different:

What did he think of all this, I asked him. What happened to the Florida orange?

“I think they killed it themselves, with chemicals. That’s a fact,” Gunther said. In my time in Florida, I’d found a more complicated story, but down here, everyone had their theories, their longing for citrus nirvana, and their anger at the loss.

“They sprayed so much chemicals, the damn grass don’t even grow here anymore—you can quote me,” Gunther said. “I knew it back in 1990. I said, ‘They’re sprayin’ so much chemicals it’s gonna be the end.’ And it’s the end.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com