Do you  where your apple juice comes from? It comes from China. Two decades ago the United States had a healthy apple juice industry, but due to increases Chinese apple production over the past two decades, their apple juice concentrate has flooded the US market.

According to F&WW, more than 70 percent of the apple juice consumed in the United States now comes from the People’s Republic of China, where the government has acknowledged a problem enforcing a new food safety law. After testing dozens of samples from three different cities in America, Dr. Oz discovered that some of the nation’s best known brands of apple juice contain arsenic. I  But the FDA still says apple juice is safe to drink.

The arsenic levels produced by the F&WW-Empire State-Paradigm tests exceeded those found in apple juice by the St. Petersburg Times in March 2010.   The Florida newspaper reported levels of 35 parts per billion.

Mott’s, an American company with a history dating back to the 1840s, has not commented on the high arsenic levels found in its apple juice. FDA, which has previously expressed concerned about arsenic levels above 23 parts per billion, also has yet to comment on the uptick that may be occurring from Chinese apple juice.

China is the world’s largest apple producer and it sells the concentrate for a fraction of what it is sold for in the U.S. The thing is Chinese apples are said to be so bitter they can barely be eaten. So they are made marketable by turning them into a powdery concentrate through a complicated  process.When consumers read the label on various other types of fruit juices, the label may list apple juice or apple juice concentrate as the first or second ingredient. But the label may not tell you whether the apple juice came from apple juice concentrate, 70% of which may be important from China.

It is a crying shame that the US government with all of it’s regulations has even driven the apple farmers out of business so that apple juice also needs to be brought in from overseas.We will certainly get what we deserve when we can no longer remember what an apple orchard looks like because we have driven our local farmers our of business all because we want cheap juice from China.

Sources:
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/
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http://blog.goodguide.com/