Pulp non-fiction

One of the many things I miss, from home, is freshly squeezed orange juice.

Not, I should explain, juice freshly squeezed from an actual orange. That's way too much like hard work, even without the mess. What I'm talking about is bottles of orange juice untreated in any way - not reconstituted, not pasteurised, sans preservatives or any other ungodly treatment visited upon its natural pulpy goodness. Typically, it has a shelf life of about a week.

It's a universal pick-me-up: a drink whose natural sugar levels give an instant boost, no matter how tired or run-down or hung-over I am, without the inevitable subsequent carb-crash of a soft drink; whose liquid rehydrates my tissues; whose vitamins I can practically feel hunting down and beating into submission all those nasty free radicals unleashed by whatever good times I've had lately.

(I am aware that certain scientists, sponsored by I-know-not-whom-but-I-have-my-suspicions, claim that there is no health benefit to "freshly squeezed" orange juice. Those scientists are idiots, as indeed is anyone who thinks that "benefits" can be measured by lab equipment. They should try drinking it.)

Given that the UK is not exactly famous for its orange groves, the fact that you can get this stuff, year-round, in any decent British supermarket is a testament to their phenomenal logistical abilities. But one quickly gets used to such luxuries.

New Zealand supermarkets, I regret to say, are not in the same league. Sometimes I wonder if they're even playing the same sport.

The "pure squeezed" juice we encounter here, in our weekly shopping, is from two suppliers: McCoy's, a French-owned brand that basically sells soft drinks and reconstituted juice, with "squeezed" juice added to the product line pretty much as an afterthought; and Charlie's [warning: website will screw with your browser window and, if you're not careful, play offensive music at you], a brand whose idea of "honest squeezed orange juice" includes pasteurisation and "added Vitamin C".

Both of these products are a feeble, whispering shadow of the drink I've been hankering for. Compared with the mulish kick of Tesco's or Sainsbury's own brands, they're about as stimulating as a prod with a dry sponge.

So imagine my unbridled joy when, a couple of weeks ago now, I discovered a new brand on the shelves of New World. A brand whose "Best Before" date, instead of months ahead, was less than ten days away. We instantly bought three litres of the stuff.

And imagine my dismay when I read, last weekend, that it's a "limited edition", only available for twelve weeks. Which, by my reckoning, should end in late April.

The best I can hope for is that it'll be such a smash hit, others will see the market niche and move whatever parts of heaven and earth are necessary to fill it. I've been doing my part, putting it away faster than a Pennsylvanian judge. Come May, we'll see if it's been enough.

Stiffening drinks

"Moderate" drinking may actually help men perform in the sack, according to a study from the Department of Credulous Research at the University of Western Australia. It's a finding that runs so counter to popular belief that it is hard even to consider taking it seriously.

The study, sponsored (I'm guessing) by Fosters, is being variously reported in Australia, the UK and, for some reason, India. It's barely made a ripple in the USA, and New Zealand media has yet to pick it up. I'm wondering if this reflects the varying states of progress in the War on Fun, as staged in each country. I recall that, in Britain, there was a lot of fuss -- many years ago now -- about drinks manufacturers "suggesting", in their marketing, that a drink might be stiff in more ways than one...

The trouble with this is that, as an issue becomes politicised, it becomes impossible to write about it without taking a political stance. And it might ally you with people, such as brewers and advertising companies, that you'd rather not be associated with. So journalists will be put off such stories, even if they are real, for fear that covering them might damage their own carefully cultivated, politically-aware image.

Not that I'm sure this story is real. The story is based, New Scientist tells us, on an "anonymous postal survey" of 1770 Western Australian men. (Other sources report a sample size of 1580. Why the discrepancy?) I'm no epidemiologist, but "postal survey" doesn't sound very authoritative -- like "phone survey", but worse. Then there's the possibility that Western Australia might have cultural, social, economic or environmental factors that make it anomalous...

All of which just goes to show how badly I'm under the thumb of conventional, Shakespearean physick. I'm looking intently for flaws in the study; loth to accept that it might actually be valid. Because that would mean I might have been wrong.