Coke Finds Fungicide in Orange Juice; U.S. Halts Imports

If you needed another reason to buy American, here is one for you. Coca Cola who owns the Minute Maid brand is reporting that trace amounts of a fungicide is showing up in their orange juice supply. The orange juice is coming from Brazil. Minute Maid uses a combination of Florida and Brazil grown oranges, and so does a lot of companies. The fungicide is used in Brazil to treat trees that have black spot, a type of mold. This fungicide has not been approved for us in the United States. Yet it still has ended up in our orange juice. As a result of this situation, the U.S. has put a temporary halt to importing orange juice from any country, until more testing can be done.

Here is another reason why I highly recommend buying only U.S. grown fruit and juice made from U.S. grown fruit. I talk about the same thing when Dr. Oz made the big fuss over arsenic in apple juice. You need to be reading everything that is written on a carton of juice. If it's not made from just U.S. oranges than you might want to think twice before you buy it. It may turn out that the fungicides that ended up in the juice are nothing serious and that seems to be what the FDA is saying so far. But I am pretty sure they are doing you any good either, so why not error on the side of caution and buy American (good for our economy too).

What Orange Juice Brands Use Oranges from Brazil?
The two big name orange juice brands both use oranges from Brazil. That would be Minute Maid and Tropicana. However, Tropicana is in the process of switching to only using Florida grown oranges in their juice. But stores shelves will probably still have Brazilian OJ in them. The Simply Orange is also owned by Coke, so there juice could too contain Brazilian orange juice. If you are at all concerned, I would avoid these brands for the time being, and just buy ones that say they contain 100% Florida (or U.S.) orange juice.

Here is a list of the orange juices that may contain juices from other countries. I also have another list that contains juices that use only 100% Florida oranges.

1) Minute Maid
2) Tropicana
3) Simply Orange
4) Old Orchard (100% Frozen Orange Juice says contains juice from USA, Brazil, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica)
5) Prairie Farms
6) Full Circle Organic
7) Nantucket Nectars
8) Meijer Brand

If you carefully read the carton or container you should be able to find the source of their oranges either near the bar code or nutrition facts. Also a lot of companies print the countries the juice came from on the neck of their container.