The Store-Bought Orange Juice You Should Remove From Your Shopping List

It wasn't so long ago that we used to regularly drink orange juice from frozen concentrate. Nowadays, though, you can get fresh (or fresh-ish) orange juice right from the refrigerator aisle of your supermarket, perfect for your morning breakfast or evening screwdrivers. While you might think there are only so many ways to squeeze an orange and sweeten its juice, there is a wide range of OJ on the market — some much better than others, as our store-bought orange juice ranking can attest. You can buy Tropicana, you can buy Kennesaw, you can even buy 365 Organic, but steer clear of Stop & Shop's offering.

Stop & Shop is a chain of grocery stores in the northeastern United States, and it's a fairly reliable, unobjectionable one at that. This doesn't mean every item sold under its store brand is good, as is evident from the orange juice. "The juice feels thin in the mouth and tastes highly acidic," our taste tester wrote. There was also quite a bit of sugar, but it did pretty much nothing to tamp down the bitter and sour flavors. As it turns out, nobody wants to wash down their French toast with a juice that tastes like a tall, cool glass of battery acid.

Why does Stop & Shop's orange juice taste so grody? A big hint is right there on the box: "from concentrate." That means the juice is made with a mixture that had nearly all its water extracted from it and is then reconstituted. This makes the juice's ingredients cheaper and easier to transport, but unfortunately, it requires a lot more processing and sweetening. You can clearly taste the difference in Stop & Shop's orange juice. Plus, the end result of the process is that the juice has fewer vitamins and minerals.

If you're starting to get a little worried, don't worry: It's still perfectly fine to drink orange juice from concentrate. It's not as fresh-tasting or nutrient-dense as non-concentrated orange juice, but it's not actively harmful, either. (If you were given the choice between drinking orange juice from concentrate and smoking a cigarette, you should choose the former.) Still, you should ask a little more of your breakfast beverages, and you shouldn't have to settle for juice from concentrate when there are so many superior options.