The American Claude C. Hopkins (1866–1932) was one of the great pioneers of advertising and also a strong advocate that his strategies and results could be scientifically measured. In his opinion, it was only necessary to find a way for the customer to feel the urgent need to purchase the product by appealing to their emotional weaknesses.
Hopkins was the creator of a major and persuasive advertising campaign to sell orange juice, which ended up being presented as a kind of elixir for children .
This campaign, in fact, bore many similarities to the gimmicks used at the time to sell miracle drugs, such as snake oil .
The Mysterious Doctor Wiley
Hopkins thus presented orange juice as a nutritional supplement to the normal diet of infants and children. In fact, in their ads you could see a mother with a newborn in a nursing position, which was nevertheless fed with a spoon and orange juice.
In another announcement, Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz cite other significant statements in The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century , where a certain Dr. Wiley says: “oranges […] are better than drugs”, or that “practically all reputable doctors advise including orange juice in the diet of young children, even newborns.”
Later, following the discovery of what we now call vitamin C, orange juice was given an even greater medical mark. Vitamin C began to be perceived as a magic ingredient , so statements such as “You need to drink orange juice every day” were made.
Today we know that all that advertising campaign was built on lies, half truths and a lot of pseudoscience. In fact, despite what Dr. Wiley said, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against feeding young children orange juice . In addition, excessive consumption can cause tooth decay, bloating, gas and diarrhea.
Fruit juice and cancer
What is recommended is to include fruit and vegetables in a healthy diet. How? Preferably eating whole pieces. In fact, drinking juice is not the same as eating fruit, but not by far. When drinking an orange juice, we ingest sugar but little fiber.
The study Citrus fruit and cancer risk in a network of case-control studies published in Cancer Causes & Control in 2009, concluded that citrus fruits had a protective role against cancers of the digestive and upper respiratory tract. Citrus juice was never discussed at any time.
In a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2019 by researchers from the French Public Health Agency and the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN) in Bobigny, France, which analyzed data from more than 101,250 people, it was concluded that drinking an average of just under 200 ml of a sugary drink or fruit juice was associated with an 18 percent increased risk of cancer.
The Orange Juice and Cancer Chemoprevention study published in 2013 in the Journal Nutrition and Cancer pointed to a possible chemopreventive effect of orange juice. However, as its authors pointed out at the time, the evidence for chemoprevention of orange juice in humans is limited . In rodents, it was seen that it could help reduce the risk of cancer. The researchers concluded that it was necessary to conduct epidemiological studies and randomized controlled intervention studies in humans to evaluate the chemopreventive effect of orange juice, taking into account the variability in its composition.
