Minute Maid is discontinuing frozen juices after 80 years
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/02/05/minute-maid-frozen-orange-juice-discontinued/88528218007/Open linkView original on lemmy.world491
Comments170https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/02/05/minute-maid-frozen-orange-juice-discontinued/88528218007/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Future generations will never experience making this stuff with too little water to create a mixer that hides the taste of cheap booze.
Yeah... water... we definitely weren't using light beer to water down our hard liquor with this stuff
Given the choice between Flint water and Coors Light, I'd take the Flint water, thanks.
As someone who grew up in Colorado and now lives in Michigan, this hits hard.
As someone who has only left the East Coast to visit Texas (primarily for the eclipse) and Mexico, I feel like I have to ask...
Do the Rockies actually taste like donkey piss and sadness?
Based on the history, yeah probably.
🤮
Juice concentrate, light beer and cheap booze? You got some advanced mixes
If I remember correctly the recipe was 1 handle of Everclear, 1 case of Natty light and 1 or 2 of the pink lemonade blocks. Easy and guaranteed to get you blackout drunk
Case of natty and handle of 190 proof alcohol would be an emergency room visit for most if they’re lucky.
I actually did the math and it works out to 17% abv or about 34 proof. Certainly on the high end of what you should put in a solo cup but we also usually had ice and as previously noted, the objective was to get fucked up
My money is that someone will start pitching it as a green alternative. Dry / powered soaps are hot again because you’re not shipping and storing a bunch of water.
If coke was smart, they would’ve put this green and brown tube, and called it “Juice, by Ecofruit”
Energy wise it's a wash whether it's concentrated or not. Concentrated requires reducing it which is just boiling it down (under a vacuum apparently to reduce temps needed), and then freezing during transportation. Non-concentrated weighs more so more energy for transportation and more packaging, and still needs cooling. So they come out comparable afaik.
I don't believe that. On electric vehicles, 90% of the energy is used to move the thing. A charged EV battery can power a standard household worth of appliances for two days.
Furthermore, the energy expenditure to dehydrate the concentrate is a one-time b cost, whereas transportation cost increases with distance.
What I DO believe is that manufacturers see transportation as less of a cost, because they offload it to distribution networks.
Do you have any idea how much energy is needed to boil something down? It's a shit ton.
As for distance, you know they can do the calculations for a country right?
This is not a calculation by the manufacturer. You're weaving around everything.
I would filter concentrate it. But that's just me.
I think it would clog up the filter pretty damn quickly. Ps You'd need reverse osmosis, which clogs up even with mostly clean water.
Current generations including my own have already not had that experience.
Shame, “Get Laid Lemonade” got me through college.
This was the foundational element of my jungle juice recipe.
Bringing new meaning to Minute Maid.
Oh, NOW you tell me about this
Minute Maid isn't the only one who makes this. There's usually a couple choices in the freezer aisle.
Minute maid is the only maker left if you're Canadian. The other maker stopped production a couple of years ago.
Could still use Tang
Used to make margaritas that way in college. Get the frozen limeade mix and replace half the water with equal parts cheap silver tequila and triple sec. Slice up some fresh lime on top if you're feeling fancy.
They're really good but will absolutely wreck your shit.
Just use powdered Tang, same results.
My guess is they just couldn't concentrate.
Its a shame it has to be diluted.
Water we going to do?
Really trying to squeeze this joke aren't we?
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?
Growing up in the 90s we often had this frozen concentrate in the freezer. But I hardly ever drink juice now, and prefer to eat oranges over drinking juice.
Same. The adults who raised me bought diet soda and always had a jug of fruit juice in the fridge for the kids.
Why yes, they did always vote Republican. How did you know?
Is diet soda and juice a reflection of one's politics now...?
Yeah, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
No, but the ignorance of blindly believing the TV (when it says that aspartame and sugar-rich fruit juices are healthy beverage options for kids) sure is.
I think that was just the 90s. “Health food stores” were like 90% vitamins/supplements and 10% terrible bread and bulk bins of brewers yeast and brown rice.
My family went to the heath food store a lot, voted blue and marched against nestle and the gulf war. And we drank a lot of concentrated orange juice.
We thought juice was heathy 🤷♀️
What’s wrong with aspartame?
studies kept going back and forth how its a potential carcinogen. Likewise with stevia too, i suspect its a way to discourage stevia use and go on aspartame related drinks.
Nothing, at best there's some iffy studies that inconclusively say it might be, possibly a carcinogen.
Maybe...
The studies are not iffy, but if you try and publish any data questioning the safety of artificial sweetners, you could get turfed from a university because they have a massive war chest of lawyers defending a $600M industry.
Aspartame is two synthetic amino acids and can interfere with brain signaling, especially in people who replace any water in their diet with diet sodas. No one anticipated the gluttony of diet soda drinkers, and FDA safety trials used a fraction of intake of the real world. US consumes 12 GALLONS per capita a year.
Similarly, MSG industry has so many attack bots out there that if you even question if a brain neurotransmitter analog has side effects they label you a racist.
As a biochemist, I would avoid any artificial sweetner or flavor enhancer. Aspartame certainly triggers carcinogenic pathways and since it came on the market, diabetes rates rapidly increased.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38769413/
i dont see how it a political affiliation for these types of foods. it doesnt determine who you vote if you are drinking a certain beverage?
A lot of the push that caused the myths of juice and what not in the 80s and 90s come from the Republicans. Was backed by Republican funding and businesses.
So yes, it does actually weirdly have a political affiliation. It became wide spread across basically all of America. But Republicans were the first to do it, and the last to let it go.
Uh no. All food agricorps pushed their products through marketing campaigns.
To be fair, we stopped buying their frozen juice around 20 years ago when the off-brand juices became just as good and Minute Maid started putting increased amounts of sugar in most of them (and jacking up the prices of the others).
Then probably 5 years later, we just stopped buying juice altogether and went back to eating fruit and making smoothies from frozen fruit.
Yeah I drank OJ like it was going out of style until I realized it was rotting my teeth and making me fat, just soda with fresher taste (and more acid). They don't give juice to kids anymore. It was a scam. Fruit is awesome tho, I try to eat a couple pieces a day.
My old man was drinking like a gallon of OJ (boomer logic of vitamin C, juice is good for you, etc.) a week until the doctor said he was pre-diabetic lol.
It's amazing how American diets are dictated by marketing agencies from NY. Eggs, bacon, juice, cereal were all marketing campaigns, not organic choices.
People used to eat leftovers and pie for breakfast.
Fr just eat food you like, and stop when youre full. Prioritize whole foods if you can but it really doesnt even matter that much as long as youre maintaining a balance.
Barring an addicition or other ED, this works for most people i know to stay healthy
the NY area in the 1800s at 8 million pies a year.
But eggs, bacon, and juice are delicious.
When I went on my big diet a couple of years ago (I've lost 100 lbs so far), I started having a "healthy breakfast" that included some sort of juice, usually orange juice. My diet was working well, and my doctor asked about my method, and I mentioned juice.
She immediately told me to stop drinking juice, saying "Don't get your calories from juice, it's mostly sugars, get your calories from real food." I stopped drinking juice, and while I can't identify the specific benefit of that, I can understand how a big sweet calorie bomb at the beginning of the day is not a good idea for weight loss.
i stopped buying juice, too much sugar and hfcs, now its sparkling water, or unsweetened tea
I used to eat this stuff straight from the can, with a spoon.
No shame in that. Diabetes maybe. But definitely no shame.
I'd take a little nibble of the ice before making the juice.
Hell yeah. It's like a really good orange freezie, right?
I was more fond of fruit punch, or five alive, but yes =)
I guess cornering the market in Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice futures will be yet another anachronism, like taping a show or dialing a phone
I need to watch this movie still. I've been wanting to watch it since it was brought up in a infotainment video I watched on YouTube. Now's the perfect time to watch I guess.
I rewatched it a couple years ago for the first time in decades. It holds up surprisingly well for an 80s comedy. The scene where they explain how the futures market works is basically right out of an economics text book. Like, literally. I believe they got an economics professor who wrote one of the most influential text books to consult on those parts of the film.
If you want a fun chaser, watch Coming To America right after. There's a bit of an easter egg cameo.
Yeah, I may do that. I'm cooped up for the weekend for a knee surgery I had this morning.
Good luck healing up!
Thank you! Should be a breeze once I get through this weekend 🙂
What movie is that from?
Trading Places
Department of Agriculture strikes again lol
Damn, even with the lower user count than reddit, I still have no unique thoughts :(
Not if it involves a guy in a monkey suit
The whole frozen OJ industry was based out of Florida, which has suffered a 90% decline in production, thanks to citrus greening disease.
take that Anita Bryant 😤
Great read, thanks!
What weird timing. My husband and I were just telling our daughter how there used to be so many different types of frozen juice and now there’s hardly any.
yea. there used to be two full doors or more in the freezer for just frozen concentrated juices. now there's one little tiny shelf and all the variety is gone.
there's more profit in "premium" refrigerated "ready to drink" product.
Uses to use these to make a whiskey slush that would take like 3 days to freeze and during the 4th of July weekend we'd have to protect the freezer from the uncles trying to "grab just a cup" early
… I am confuse.
You would take this frozen juice concentrate, mix this with copious amounts of whiskey, and then set it in the freezer. Because of the high alcohol content, it would not freeze like regular liquid. This was in anticipation of a family get-together around the 4th of July. Without judicious monitoring, the adult men would drink all of the punch before it was ready to be served.
Clear as mud?
We used to do one can of frozen OJ to one bottle of vodka. I don't think we ever gave it 3 days to freeze though. It was a pleasant slush.
We called it 'juice'.
They used the Minute Maid as a mixer with whiskey, which they would then freeze into a slushy/slurry thing. It would take about 3 days in the freezer to hit its "final form", so to speak. Very popular at their family's/neughborhood's/local 4th of July (U.S. Independence Day) parties.
The beverage was tasty/intoxicating enough that middle-aged male relatives and/or friends would try to sneak "just a cup" (not literally 8 fluid ounces / ~240 mL) before the beverage was made generally available to party-goers, and potentially even prior to the day of the party. This risks not having enough for the party itself, because of selfishness.
This is what they get for making "never from concentrate" a seal of quality
It's amazing how well the marketing worked to sell an inferior product for more money.
Turns out when they pasteurize it it destroys most of the flavor, so then they re-add flavor artificially extracted from other juice. "Not from concentrate" arguably, but very highly processed.
Juice from frozen concentrate is still far from as good as fresh-squeezed, but it's a whole lot closer than the "not from concentrate" sludge. And ironically cheaper. It's particularly good slightly under-diluted.
It always tastes better with half a can less of water than it recommends doing.
A good chunk of me suspects that is the real point.
Q1? Get rid of concentrated juice. Q2? Get rid of "never from concentrate". Q3? Sell made from concentrate juice.
Which, to be clear, is not actually an inherently bad product. But it is definitely cheaper.
It's much better quality.
I never cared much for the orange juice, but minute maid frozen lemonade concentrate is amazing. I'm going to miss that one for sure.
The tea lemonade was bangin’ too
They will take my frozen OJ from my cold sticky hands.
They probably will.
When I was a kid, I remember the grocery store freezers had a huge section devoted to racks of frozen concentrates. Now it's just a tiny little space at the bottom somewhere. I guess even that's going away.
Get used to this kids. The economy is shrinking faster than a Republican hard-on when they see 18 year olds with blue hair and nose rings.
I think there are many Republicans down to fuck someone with blue hair
I think it's the 18 that'll turn away some
Not publicly
I never understood why Americans freeze this stuff? Like we have juice concentrates in the UK, be we just keep them as a liquid in a bottle or as a syrup in a little squeeze thing.
This isn't the same as Robinson's orange syrup. It's literally frozen orange pulp and juice that's been concentrated down by evaporating off the water. It's not remotely shelf stable, but what you get is literally the same orange juice you could buy in a box in the store, at a fraction of the cost because you save on shipping weight and packaging. It's amazing stuff and I wish I'd had access to it back when I lived in the UK.
Orange juice, minus most of the water. Add the water back yourself, save the cost of shipping a larger/heavier item, and reduced packaging costs.
I'd be wary of Tang.. I was hopelessly addicted to the stuff in high school and, let me say, the withdrawal was quite unpleasant.
Hmm
I think it has the longest life before going bad and it was a popular choice for low income families who wanted to stock up on stuff. I think it also became popular for food banks to hand out as well. Though we’ve moved away from that mostly. I rarely see people buy them anymore and if they do they likely do it by habit because they grew up in a family that used it.
I assume store brands and other brands will still keep making that stuff.
Yup. My Mom got these for years to save money and make sure we got enough vitamin C. I hated orange juice for a long time because whatever brand she bought was awful and had an overly sour, almost fermented tang to it. Went on a road trip with friends to celebrate graduation and my uncle served us fresh squeezed OJ at one of our stops. It was almost life changing.
Lasts longer
No, the British stuff lasts forever, but it tastes like ass. We call it "squash" and it's just fruit flavoured sugar syrup. It makes something kind of like flat Fanta.
At that point I would just drink water.
Yeah, water is infinitely preferable.
It's honestly made so worse by the fact that the average British mum will read the package directions, go "Oh no, that's way too much" and proceed to add about a tea spoon of syrup to about a gallon of water, making something that vaguely hints at the concept of flavour, but ends up tasting mostly of dirty bath water.
I still bet the frozen stuff lasts longer. And it tastes like juice.
Here's a great video on why! https://youtu.be/9wSQ9Zk_9gQ
I didn't even know they were still around. I haven't seen them in the grocery stores in ages.
Last time I looked the entire frozen juice section was just a shelf, and the OJ was about double the price I was expecting.
it hasn't been a 'value' option for at least 20 years now.. based on per-unit price, it's often more expensive than the lowest cost refrigerated carton
It's been at least 15 years since I've bought a can of the stuff. Too much sugar.
My mom bought this all the time. I have never in my life bought this stuff.
Give it a go - it's way better than the not-from-concentrates crap, even while being cheaper.
I'm guessing it's because they can't compete with store brands and other cheap competition. My family buys this stuff, and we never pay the premium for the brand name.
Aren’t store brands usually made by the same manufacturer though? I assumed if the name brand stopped producing the store brands would too.
I would think it would depend on how much of the manufacturers profit stemmed from the name brand company. It's possible that everyone is charged the same, in which case it may not matter. But if the store brands are getting a discount for using the excess manufacturing, then yeah it's either higher prices or the factory stops.
Dang, I often use these for baking if I want to add some flavor to a cake or something. They're fun for mixing into carbonated water, too!
I use Mio or other "flavour enhancer drops" for carbonated water to make all kinds of different sodas. My favourite is either cherry blackberry or pomegranate. I know it doesn't help with the cake situation, but hopefully you can at least still make some fun water.
The artificial sweeteners probably don't bake well.
Or taste well.
Shame. I never bought it but I did enjoy what it brought to the colours and shapes on the supermarket freezer shelf. RIP sideways orange black and white cylinder.
No need to panic, folks. I didn't see the Strawberry Daiquiri concentrate mix listed as discontinued. We're gonna be juuuuuust fiiiiiiiine.
This news makes me sad I do not have a pitcher to make any juice from concentrate in. No other pineapple juice is as good as frozen minute maid concentrate 😭
Stopped buying it when they shrank the can years ago.
the standard size has made 1.5 quarts for as long as i can remember.. at least the 1970s. there used to be smaller and larger ones in some brands, though.
They shrank them maybe 13ish years ago I believe.
I've not bought this in my adult life but was recently reminiscing about it and was planning on buying some. I better do it now!
My father is going to be so upset.
I'm a childless 26yo and I'm upset. Does that include the adli's brand orange juice too? If it does not, then I'm less sad.
Truer words have never been spoken LMAO
Looks like MinuteMaid manufactures 54% of all of it in the USA, followed by Old Orchard with 37%
But this is the best way to get pink lemonade :((((
$8 for 26 quarts
It’s not the same :(((
Is that a powder or frozen concentrate? I don't live near a Walmart so it is not easy to buy that brand.
It's a powder.
Twice a year, used this for a family punch recipe that never tasted quite like it did when we were kids. I guess it’s dead.
Buy another brand?
Are there other brands in the US? In Canada they're the only manufacturer left.
I can't name one, frankly, but they exist. I had been getting the store brand for going on 20 years now because it's been around that long that store brand has been better than name brand.
I don't buy often, just when I'm hankering for chicken a l'orange.
My local grocery store has two other brands besides minute maid.
Donald Duck
One of the ingredients is only ever available name brand. I haven’t found limeade made by anyone else in store.
Shame. This stuff was a staple in college. It was a few bucks cheaper than "fresh" orange juice (which is a lot of times from concentrate itself)
I don't often have oj in the house, but I always keep one of these in the freezer in case someone gets sick or we get a craving.
CBC did an investigation on commercial OJ that basically ruined it for me.
I used to love OJ, but noticed that it all started tasting like shit about 20 years ago. Coincidence, or related?
Because after pasteurized orange juice is deaerated and kept in storage tanks for up to a year before being bottled and shipped, it becomes tasteless and needs to be reflavored with 'flavor packs'.
wtf, what is the point then lol.
...well that's awful.
I genuinely don’t know how I’ll make margaritas going forward. Devastating
Try making them the proper way, I guess
Classic Margarita Recipe
That’s something else entirely, the frozen limeade margarita is for whipping up a pitcher in 2 minutes at 3am and distributing to yourself and your 4 drunkest friends. It will be missed
Truly, this is the end times.
I just got into cider-making.
good timing
damn it
I use it for duck à l'orange
I've never had that but want to try it
Well this is far from the official fancy version but basically I roast the duck on a rack in a deepish roasting pan with Lawrys seasoned salt, some five-spice or pie spice, and about halfway through I pour the thawed but not diluted concentrate over it. Baste as it caramelizes to glaze the bird, and when it's done pour all the dripping into a gravy separator so you can leave most of the fat behind. The cooled fat goes into the freezer. It's very nice useful fat but you won't want any today, because your whole house smells like duck.
I can't read duck à l'orange without thinking about this sketch:
https://youtu.be/_Re6pZri8Gw
Compared to most concentrate orange juice, the frozen Minute Maid one wasn't nearly as sour. The Great Value one tastes terrible, but maybe there's another alternative... 🤔
So, fun fact, when it was discovered you could freeze concentrate like this to vastly extend shelf life it lead to overproduction and unsustainable expansions
that is... fun?
Yeah, really weird to think about.
"So you're saying we can just make as much Oranges as we want and you'll take all of it?"
"Yes."
And so they did.
and 80 years later their business failed
80 years is a good run!
Nothing of value was lost
Well I guess Johnny 5-Alive is dead.
Well, it's all the best...I mean we don't have to mix this shit with PFA's right?
Good riddance.