Are you getting a takeaway tonight?

Shops can sell a wide range of products here so long as they are correctly and properly described. There is nothing wrong with selling orange juice from a carton, whether ‘pressed and never from concentrate’ or ‘from concentrate’ so long they don’t say it is ‘freshly squeezed’. There was a time when a lot of cafes had a glass container full of orange liquid with plastic oranges floating on the top; that had to stop, but ‘freshly squeezed’ is still open to interpretation as to whether it is done there and then on the premises or is done in a food factory, piped into cartons, and then chilled. To remain ‘freshly squeezed’ It needs to be kept refrigerated all the way through to the point of sale. Many establishments in the UK do now use whole oranges and squeeze the juice out before your very eyes. Most people who ask for an orange juice in a pub or restaurant get juice made from concentrate. There is nothing wrong with it but it will have been homogenised and have little evidence of any fibre.

I suspect selling freshly squeezed oranges in the USA is a matter of commercial choice and not a food safety requirement. With good oranges from Florida and California being ten a penny in the States there is no need to sell juice made from concentrate or out of a carton – that juice can be pressed from imperfect fruits and exported to Europe at greater profit. Or perhaps in America there are laws to protect home grown production. That’s irrelevant in this context here – we can’t grow oranges so they are going to be imported in some form or another. In the UK the food inspectors probably do not routinely examine the orange juice supplied in establishments but I hope they make a hygiene inspection of any appliances used to make ‘freshly squeezed orange juice’ on the premises. They should also be checking for correct labelling and dealing with any incorrect description at the point of sale, and should follow-up any complaints about the product.

On the orange juice, it certainly is a commercial decision, as many smaller outlets sell it straight from a chilled bottle. The other aspect of the US diet is its delight in sugar. Almost everything has sugar added, which makes breakfast rather hard to take in our case. One reason why they keep a firm hand on food inspections, however, is because of the average temperatures in much of the USA. The southern states, popular with visitors, become very hot at times, and therefore food storage and safety assumes a much higher priority than it does in places like Iceland.

America also has a rich history of shysters and was quite late on the food safety and hygiene scene.

“We estimate that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Known pathogens account for an estimated 14 million illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations, and 1,800 deaths.” [Centers for Disease Control & Prevention 1999 – wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/5/99-0502_article]

I used to believe Doner Kebab was a Turkish pop star… or Russian pop Tsar?

On the word “concentrate ” it means that the whole orange is used not just the inner core.

Having eaten in many an American eating establishment, I can’t say I have noticed a particularly high quality of hygiene and food standards.

We usually avoid cheap all-you-can-eat establishments but sometimes don’t have a choice especially for breakfast, and the orange stuff they serve up certainly is not pure orange juice and I don’t know how they get away with calling bits of fat – bacon. Scrambled eggs are a strange consistency so it is best to ask for a fried egg – over easy.

Then there all the faded label Heinz ketchup bottles on tables that are refilled with cheap ketchup.

And if you have been in a busy kitchen, there is more food on the floor than on plates. I have never seen rats, but plenty of cockroaches after dark. 😖