Don Tai (Canada) Blog

President's Choice (Loblaws) Concentrated Orange Juice, Canada Grade A, tastes great!

For the life of me I could not find the definitions for the various grades of frozen orange juice for Canada. Personal experience has shown me that Canada Grade A frozen orange juice tastes better than Canada Grade C. I searched Google and came up empty. I then got onto the Canada Food Inspection Agency website and sent them a question. Here is their answer as a followup to yesterday’s blog, thanks to Jean-Claude Jura, Ontario Region Manufactured Food, Food Labelling Line: Processed Products Regulations, Schedule I, Table II, Section 27.2.

Marketing Gimmick: Not From Concentrate (NFC) orange juice does not mean fresher than concentrated OJ

We live in Toronto, Canada, so do not have the luxury of going to our backyard, picking fresh oranges and juicing them. Still we love to drink orange juice, a call which is answered by a trip to the local big box grocery store. Orange Juice can be expensive, so I have done several blind taste tests on the family to see if they can tell the difference between types. In summary, there is no difference in taste between concentrate and “not from concentrate” (NFC) types. Canada Grade “A” No Name brands taste the same as good as the name brands. Added calcium does not change the taste of OJ. Chinese orange juice is discernibly tarter and therefore easy to identify. If you can buy orange juice for $1CAD/litre, this is good economy.

I'll never buy this Old South tetra pack top again. It's messy and tastes awful.

I usually have no issues with orange juice packaging, and as such take it for granted. This is not so for “Old South” orange juice with tetra top packaging. I will never again purchase any product with this type of packaging, no matter how much they go on sale.

Firstly, “Old South”, run by McCain Foods, decided their new packaging should contain less orange juice, so they cut their volume from 355 ml to 330 ml, a reduction of 7%. Because this orange juice is in concentrate, you also add 7% less water, resulting in 100 ml less overall orange juice. Why then is there no 7% reduction in the price of the product?