My Journey with Orange Juice

As a child growing up in the north of England, I remember drinking orange ‘squash’, which was (and still is, I imagine), a watery, chemical concoction containing all manner of flavourings, colourings, sweeteners and preservatives. There might be a token amount of some form of orange pulp or juice in the mix, or not, depending on the brand. Sometimes we switched to Ribena, a dark purple version of squash that allegedly was ‘rich in vitamin C’, and was considered a ‘health drink’ among my parent's generation.

As I started getting interested in natural approaches to health in my teens, it occurred to me to look into the ingredients of the various processed foods and drinks that were part of my daily diet. I learned that ‘squash’ contained virtually nothing of real nutritional value and was made of ingredients that were clearly unfit for human consumption.

I can recall trying to persuade my mother that squash was basically poison, and that anything called ‘juice drink’ was only pretending to be juice and could more accurately be called ‘coloured chemical sugar water’. My argument didn’t really make sense to her - surely the manufacturers wouldn’t be allowed to get away with such things, would they?

Reluctantly, to stop me complaining, she agreed to make the switch. We transitioned to something called ‘orange juice from concentrate’, which I guess was the cheapest version of actual ‘juice’ my dear mother could find in the local supermarket.

It was some years later that I discovered the existence of a ‘fresh-squeezed, not from concentrate’ variety of orange juice. It seemed to taste better, and actually contained mostly what it said it contained - orange juice. It had to be a healthier version. Time to switch again.

My education took a further turn when I learned that those healthy ‘fresh squeezed’ juices were in fact all pasteurised, and something vital was being eliminated in the trade-off for a longer shelf-life. It was sterile, germ-free, and essentially dead.

Following this revelation I had all but given up on buying orange juice except on the rare occasions when I came across a genuine ‘fresh-squeezed, unpasteurised’ version.

Then one day a few years ago, I found myself buying some fresh oranges and juicing them by hand. What a novel idea! I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before, but I knew instantly that I would never go back to any of the bottled or cartoned versions, and I never have.

I shared this story with the group on our recent Holistic Healer Foundation Training to illustrate how we can incrementally modify our behaviour and make wiser, healthier choices as our understanding deepens.

My orange squash learning experience could of course be a metaphor for lots of other things. The idea that a man-made chemical cocktail could be promoted as a ‘health product’ (or even a life-saver) seems to be quite persistent.

We think we can out-smart nature in so many clever ways, but we’re only ever fooling ourselves. And poisoning ourselves. And we'll keep doing it until it kills us, or we come to our senses, whichever is the sooner.

I sometimes like to imagine one final step that will complete my journey of citrus-related education. It involves me picking perfectly ripe, in-season, organic oranges directly from the tree in my own sunny little garden. I’ll raise a glass of the freshly squeezed juice to your health, and mine.