Research: Orange Juice – What people are looking for

softdrink-125x125Orange Juice is another popularly compared food category on FoodEssentials.com with 8583 comparisons in the last 6 months – or 1.34% of all comparisons – which if you consider there are over 1000 food categories – is a fair bit of attention.

We have 86 products categorized under the orange juice food category and below we will explore what people are looking for when comparing different orange juice products.

Top 5 Comparisons:

If I had to have at a guess as to the top variable that were compared in the orange juice category I would say probably, calories and sugar.  The table below outlines the top food variables that people are choosing when they compare orange juice. Sugar (16%) is in the top 5 with a significant share of the comparisons, however the most compared variable is suprisingly Colors (26.2%) and Preservatives(12.9%) follows up in 3rd place.

Orange Juice – Top Comparisons

Rank Comparison Num Comparisons Percentage
1 Colors 2246 26.2%
2 Sugars 1370 16.0%
3 Preservatives 1107 12.9%
4 Artificial Color Yellow 5 518 6.0%
5 High Fructose Corn Syrup 332 3.9

Looking a little into the data through Labelbase we can see that of the 86 orange juices, 55 of them contain ingredients that could be considered as possibly added color ingredients such as ascorbic acid(vitamin C),   Beta Carotene, Yellow 5, Caramel Color, Riboflavin, Tumeric, Paprika, Sodium Nitrite and many others.  Furthermore, when we look into the preservatives there are 62 products of the 86 that contain preservatives of many different types.  Perhaps this is why of the top 5 comparisons in orange juice, 4 of them are additive comparisons – most orange juices on the shelves in supermarkets contain a large number of additives.

Second Tier Choices – when compared by Color:

In the following sections I will explore the comparison choices of Color and Preservative in a little more detail to see what else people are looking for when making those choices.  We will begin with Colors as outlined in the table below.

Second Tier Comparisons following Color – Orange Juice

Rank Comparison Num Comp. %
1 Preservatives 54 15.1%
2 High Fructose Corn Syrup 36 10.1%
3 Sweeteners 31 8.7%
4 Calories 16 4.5%
5 Gluten 15 4.2%

When people have compared Orange Juice by Color, they compare by other variables 15% of the time.  Of those other comparisons – ¨second tier choices¨ – preservatives (15%) is the most popular, followed by High Fructose Corn Syrup (10.1%), and Sweeteners (8.7%).    The latter being the only real suprise here.  When we explored the data, we found that 29 out of the 86 products contained added sweeteners such as HFCS, sucralose, acesulfame and many others.  Given the popularity of HFCS  and sweetener as a second tier compairon, which totals about 18%+, this suggests that people are very interested in knowing the the presence of Colors and sweeteners combined.

Second Tier Choices – when compared by Preservative:

On the other hand the table below shows a slightly different preference towards other additives such as MSG (15.7%), colors (9.2%) and artifial color yellow 6 (6.5%), and HFCS (7.8%) .  What is really suprising with these results is that none of the orange juices contain MSG yet it is the most popular second tier comparison after preservatives have been selected.

Second Tier Comparisons following Preservatives – Orange Juice

Rank Comparison Num Comp. %
1 MSG 58 15.7%
2 Colors 34 9.2%
3 High Fructose Corn Syrup 29 7.8%
4 Artificial Color Yellow 6 24 6.5%
5 Calories 24 6.5%

The Data:

Behavior data was captured during a survey of over 30,000 people actively using FoodEssentials.com over the last 6 months.  The full report, and custom reports are available through FoodEssentials Corporation – contact us for more information.

FoodEssentials LabelBase database is available for access upon subscription -  contact us for more information on LabelBase licenses.

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