The article that you sent was understandably appalling and so I decided to share my consumer opinion with the source. I doubt that it has really been of much help, but it made me feel slightly better. Note that my letter to them was entered on one of their web forms, oh and the bolding is mine, as it is my favorite sentence in the whole letter.

RE: Tropicana Healthy Heart

I’m speechless. I understand the importance of Omega 3 fatty acids and take Flax seed oil capsules every day. My husband and I are vegetarians and it is horrifying that we have to check the label on ORANGE JUICE to make sure there are no animal products included. Why not flax? I drink Tropicana every day, and I realize (hopefully) that this is just in ONE of your products, but this decision makes me want to boycott all Pepsi products. Please explain the rationale behind anchovies in my orange juice!
EMAIL*MESSAGE*END

Tammy:

We’re sorry the presence of ingredients sourced from fish in Tropicana Pure Premium Healthy Heart Orange Juice with Omega-3’s causes you concern. Clearly you were upset about this, and we are sorry.

Your well being and the reputation of our products for quality and safety are of the utmost importance to us. Please be assured that we take your concerns seriously and have forwarded your comments and concerns to our product development and management teams for review.

Healthy Heart is the only Tropicana product containing fish; fish based Omega-3s are the only two that are approved to use the FDA’s qualified heart health claim. Over 75% of Americans don’t get enough Omega-3’s in their diet. That’s why Tropicana created Healthy Heart with Omega-3. It’s an excellent source of Omega-3 EPA & DHA, with Potassium, Folate and Vitamin C.

You may be interested to know that in addition to listing fish in the ingredients, there is also a kosher symbol (circle K, F) on the front lower left hand corner of the carton; the letter “F” stands for fish.

We understand that consumers are concerned about various ingredients and always try to consider these concerns when developing our products. We’d like you to know, many of our juices don’t contain ingredients sourced from animals, such as our Pure Premium No Pulp Orange Juice.

We’ve mailed you a coupon in the hopes that you’ll consider purchasing one of our other varieties of juices; your coupon should arrive in about a week.

Please be assured that your feedback is important to us, Tammy, and we appreciate having your comments on file. We thank you for your business and hope you will continue to be a valued Tropicana consumer.

Margie
Tropicana Consumer Relations

Tropicana’s 514 railcars utilize environmentally-friendly refrigerants to keep our products tasting fresh.
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The NYTimes has an article up about the surge in what the food industry labels, “functional foods”. Particularly noted are some products that will be appearing at a mega-mart near you soon, Tropicana Healthy Heart orange juice and Wonder Headstart bread, which will contain omega-3 oils from anchovies and sardines. Yep, you read that right, fishy OJ and Wonderbread.

Add hidden fish to all the ways in which animal ingredients are snuck into commonplace food. Especially becuase this keeps happening in foods where one would think of checking to see if there are animal ingredients. I mean orange juice for cryin’ out loud! Who’d think of checking that for fish? Especially if you’re served it, without the comfort of the packaging there to reassure you.

Not only from a vegan perspective, but from an allergen one as well. What happens if some kid is served a nice glass of orange juice with breakfast after a sleep over at a friends house and falls over in anaphylactic shock. Everyone knows the kid is allergic to fish, but this is juice so no one thought to prevent the child from consuming it.

Ugh! It also just really irritates me the ways in which people are trying to compartmentalize all the compounds in food, so called “nutraceuticals”. In turn this gives rise to businesses dedicated to the extracting, microencapsulating, in order to sell it to Tropicana to mix into orange juice devoid of any fishy taste or smell but chock-full of “heart healthy” fish oil!

There’s just so many ways in which I find this wrong. That we’re putting fish into juice, that we’re focusing on micronutrients while not looking at the terribly complex way real food is digested by real people, and that doesn’t even get around to the ways in which companies can claim food will offer some health benefit merely so people will consume more.

Ewww, indeed. Real food, that’s what people need; tasty, in healthful proportions, and prepared with care.