Apple Juice From China

I’m not a big fan of soda, so instead I drink a lot of juice. A lot. A couple days ago there was no juice at my house. Luckily I found cranberries we froze at Thanksgiving and was able to make cranberry juice, but it made me think about how juice from the store is usually made from concentrates. In fact most juices contain multiple different types of juice concentrates, and almost always juice—no matter what kind—contains apple juice concentrate.

But where does all this apple juice concentrate come from? According to this article: China. 45% of apple juice concentrate in the United States comes from China, but the alarming thing is that China isn’t even allowed to export fresh apples to the United States. Even though they are not allowed into the fresh apple market, China is selling their concentrates at ridiculously low prices (AKA dumping) that US apple concentrate producers cannot compete with. And all those stories of lead poisoning from China? Well, lead is also in our juice according to this list of some tested fruit products that contain more than .005 milligrams of lead.

What can we do about it? Well after reading this post on a fellow cares-about-food blog(explore it—it is really informative), buying local juice is an important thing. This doesn’t mean just juice from Georgia, although we do have a lot of nice apple orchards, but juice that is made in the USA from crops grown in the USA (also look for cane sugar in the ingredients, not high fructose corn syrup!), because by doing this we are supporting the United States economy(and protecting ourselves from lead poisoning). Or you could get a juicer (I asked for one for my birthday, however, my parents did not think it was a serious request…) and make your own from really local fruits and vegetables!