You might think that bottle of “100% orange juice” was squeezed last week. In fact, most commercial juice is stored in massive tanks for up to a year before being sold. To keep it from spoiling, all the oxygen is sucked out - which also strips away nearly all the natural flavor.
To make every bottle taste the same, juice companies hire flavor scientists to design something called a “flavor pack.” These packs are mixtures of orange essences and oils that get added back to the juice just before packaging. Because the oils technically come from oranges, the label can still say “100% pure.”
Freshly squeezed juice at home tastes nothing like the cartons in the supermarket. Each orange has its own balance of sweet and sour, and the flavor changes through the year. The carton version is engineered to taste identical in January and July, in New York and New Zealand. That uniformity is the magic - and the trick.
