Pécs STOP – Hungarian Fanta oranges can be different from those available abroad

A Money center A reader who visited Italy shared his experience with Fanta oranges – as it turned out, the soft drink there contains much more orange juice (12 percent) than what you can get in domestic stores (5 percent).

Coca Cola, the producer of the product, wrote in response to the portal’s inquiry that Fanta oranges are produced throughout Europe and that the fruit content can indeed be different in different countries. They added that the fruit content in each country is mostly similar to similar products available locally and is in line with with the applicable local regulations.

The NÉBIH answered them that they had previously (in 2017) compared the soft drinks available in Austria and Hungary, when they found that the Austrian had less orange juice (3 percent) than the Hungarian (then it was 6, now 5 percent), and that lay consumers liked the product available in Hungary better. The food authority also assured the portal that these deviations – in addition to taking into account the manufacturer’s statement – can be justified by legal and objective reasons, because we do not have national legislation regarding the fruit juice content of soft drinks. (Such regulations exist in other member countries.) So the composition determined by the manufacturer is influenced by the consumer expectations of the given country. This can be called “national taste preference”. The orange Fanta soft drink is produced based on several recipes, using oranges, sugar, glucose-fructose syrup and other, even artificial, sweeteners that differ from country to country.

They also prepared a country overview, which shows that where oranges are grown, the orange content of soft drinks is typically higher.

Regarding the strikingly different soft drinks, Lajos Braunmüller, the editor-in-chief of Agrársektor, explained to their question that the tests often show such differences, the main reason for which is that the manufacturers basically try to get the raw materials from a geographically reasonable distance, even if the recipe is basically similar. At the same time, at the individual production sites, materials that can be substituted for each other, but are available in larger quantities locally, are used. He confirmed that sometimes better quality can undoubtedly be found in other countries, for example due to local needs, expectations and competition.

Source: Money Center