I love when the teacher becomes the student.
This happens every so often with clients that so embrace traditional foods that they start teaching me new tips and tricks around the kitchen.
And this happened recently with Amy, my client that I featured in my last blog series on autoimmune diseases.
Amy has really embraced fermentation. She makes her own yogurt, whey, cream cheese and fermented vegetables.
And when she told me she was going to make her own ginger ale, I was inspired to try it myself.
Amy followed the recipe exactly from Nourishing Traditions.
I did not.
I went with my “whatever, good enough” method. This is a method I use when I don’t have every exact ingredient and will either leave things out or substitute similar ones. It’s usually fine.
But not this time.
The recipe called for a half cup of fresh lime juice. I didn’t have any fresh limes. Nor did I feel like driving 40 minutes round trip to my local health food store just for a few limes.
So I decided to go with the “whatever, good enough” method.
Enter bottled lime juice.
I’ve noticed these funky little bottles in more and more health food stores.
I stock a bottle in my fridge solely for convenience. When I buy fresh organic limes, I’ll maybe use a wedge or two and then they often sit there and go bad. Furthermore, organic limes are not cheap.
So I added a half cup of the bottled stuff and let the ginger ale ferment on my counter for a few days.
I was excited for the first taste and it’s one I’ll never forget.
When I tried it for the first time my mouth puckered into the back of my head and I was hit with a shock wave of limeyness that shot through my body like a lightning bolt.
Blech!
I guess this is equivalent to what happens when some people taste fermented cod liver oil for the first time.
The recipe in Nourishing Traditions says, “Ginger ale may be mixed with carbonated water and is best sipped warm rather than gulped down cold.”
Well for my limey ginger ale, that’s putting it mildly.
I needed about three quarters seltzer to one quarter ginger ale to dilute the strong flavor. It was drinkable at that ratio, but now I had to know…
To be honest, I’m still not sure.
A brief search around the internet revealed little information.
Let’s investigate. Here’s the front:
Looks all wholesome and good, right? We got nice colors, an artsy fartsy picture of a lime, a nice logo of a sun coming up over a field (that is seriously a great logo) and of course the company name and which conjures up images of pleasant pastoral scenery.
Now you probably can’t read it but under where it says “Lime Shot” it says, “made with organic lime juice and essence.”
Now I probably should’ve realized that “lime shot” implies concentrated lime juice but the label doesn’t say “from concentrate.”
So is it from concentrate or not? I really don’t know. The fact that there’s water in the ingredients makes me think so. When juice is concentrated it loses flavor and nutritional value. Companies add water back in to make it more juice-like.
OK let’s look at the back of the label.
OK, so what the heck is organic lime essential oil? AND WHY DOES LIME JUICE NEED MORE LIME FLAVOR?!
All signs point to this not quite being the freshest stuff that the labeling implies. My taste buds certainly said so.
Still, I’m confused as to the authenticity of this lime juice.
Maybe someone out there can help me out? Please comment below if you can help educate me and perhaps others in the process. If you’re unsure yourself, share this on Facebook and ask your friends.
In the end, I’m guessing it’s fairly harmless. I know there are worse culprits in the food industry. Nevertheless, the labeling does seem misleading.
Regardless, I’ve learned my lesson. I can’t say I’ll never use this stuff again. It sure is convenient. But if a recipe ever calls for more than a squeeze of lime juice, I’ll be using the real thing from here on out.
And unless you like your mouth ending up in the back of your head, I would recommend you do the same.
First ingredient: water…. THEN, they add lime juice to that? shouldn’t the first ingredient BE lime juice??? They probably added essential lime oil to it, because of all of the water. The first ingredient on the label is always what the highest ingredient is. Water in this case. Now you have to add back in something that tastes like lime, or else. Who knows why they do what they do…. always best to read your label!
That’s what I thought. Thanks for confirming.
Lime essential oil is a natural ingredient. Do you know on the lime (or the orange, or lemon) how there are little pockets on the rind? Those pockets are formed by the essential oil “melting” them as the lime develops. The essential oil is what makes the lime smell like a lime (or an orange, or a lemon.) To gather lime essential oil, people use a method called “cold pressing.” Just like it sounds, you press the lime essential oil out of the rind…and you use thousands and thousands of limes to get an ounce of essential oil. It’s highly concentrated. It’s also NOT an astringent, as you would think, considering how astringent the *inside* of a lime (orange, lemon) is. Lime essential oil has numerous healthful benefits. It’s also pretty cheap in Italy, where lime trees grow like weeds. So, it’s hugely profitable to put water in a bottle, add a few drops of lime essential oil and citric acid and call it Lime Shot. I think you would have been fine if you had used less!!!
Hey Martha, thanks for that great explanation! Very interesting.
With orange juice, they concentrate and store the juice for long periods of time. It ends up being a tasteless sludge, so they add water and “flavoring” packets in, which usually include essential oils. Seems to me this is what they did here, too.
Craig, just FYI, there’s a brand of lime juice (and lemon juice) called Santa Cruz that comes in glass bottles and lists as its only ingredient “organic lime juice” (or “organic lemon juice”). They sell it at our local (Northampton, MA) co-op, probably among other places. I used to get the little plastic jobbies for just the reason you describe (too much rotten citrus fruit in the fridge!), but stopped once a friend told me about the Santa Cruz stuff. It’s not fresh, of course, but it’s quite decent.
)
Thanks Chris, I’ll check that out next time. I have to admit the little lime bottles really stand out from a marketing perspective. I’m guessing the Santa Cruz is buried on the shelves somewhere but I’ll look for it at RVM.
I know at WFM they are in the juice isle…top shelf. They are decent and I use them when I am adding lemon to my water daily but the flavor definitely is not as ‘fresh’ tasting.
I recently saw an expose on orange juice - I will try to find it because I am not good at holding the details in my mind. What it came down to was even the orange juice that is NOT from concentrate was getting “flavor packs” thrown in that are listed as “natural flavor” on the ingredients. The flavor packs are made of oranges and are used to give pasteurized and stored juices have a flavor more like fresh juice. Just because it is made of oranges also means they were often allowed to not mention the flavor packs on the label, even as “natural flavor” sometimes. The problem comes in when you mess with the oils. Remember that citrus oils are quite handy as cleaners? The FORM of the oils is important. I think the oils had been denatured (no, that’s protein) or otherwise chemically altered so as to be not the same oil as comes from the fresh rind, and perhaps even be toxic. I am guessing that this is the same for reconstituted lime juice. Has anyone else heard of this issue with orange juice? I will try to find my source.
Okay, this was evidently big news, so easy to track down. Cheers!
http://www.foodrepublic.com/2012/02/24/whats-really-your-orange-juice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/100-percent-orange-juice-artificial_n_913395.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/034703_orange_juice_flavor_packs_ingredients.html
And a nice-sounding description of the processing for OJ from Tropicana:
http://www.tropicana.com/#/trop_grovetoglass/grovetoglass.swf?tropicana_passion_satisfaction
It’s not totally clear, kind of tuceslrannt, almost like when you make real homemade lemonade. You can see some of the pulp and there’s a tiny bit of color. The lemons and limes cut up make it very pretty.
I made a similar realization some months ago, but with lemon juice. I’m always amazed at what needs to be added to an “all natural 100%” juice. Bleh!
Great post. Hopefully the next times works out better.
All citrus can be squeezed at the height of freshness( zested first ) and frozen in ice cube trays until needed. Put the zest in freezer bags and use when desired. Enjoy!
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I remember reading somewhere citric acid not being organically derived or from fruit, allowable as a chemical to organic product. I used to avoid it when possible in tomato sauce as well. Surprised no one mentioned it, I forget if it was possible msg or gluten or possibly I am over cautios at times.. But anyway just wanted to say I really enjoy reading your articles and especially this one, now I know I’m not the only one with epic fails in the kitchen
Hi Jeannine, I haven’t heard that about citric acid but it would not surprise me at all. And thanks for your kind words!