Minute Maid orange juice has something fishy: its colour

Orange pulp. Concentrated orange juice. Vitamin C. Those are words I'd expect to find on the ingredients label of a bottle of orange juice. So imagine my surprise last week when, having purchased a Minute Maid orange juice, I glanced at the label and discovered one of the ingredients was "fish product".

Thoughts of depleted global fish stocks raced through my mind - is this why the wild Chinese sturgeon is on the brink of extinction? Is a goliath grouper swimming in my OJ? Did I kill Free Willy? (I know whales fall into the mammal not fish category, but I was in free fall.)

When I dialled the customer information hotline, the polite lady at Swire Coca-Cola HK - the corporate giant that bottles and distributes Minute Maid here - informed me that the fish product is found in a food additive, listed on the label as Colour 160a.

"The fish product gives the juice its orange colour," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan, but when I buy a fruit drink I do not expect it to contain seafood.

Surely the people at Swire should better label their drinks so the consumer knows exactly what they are, erm, consuming?

Next time I need a vitamin C boost I won't reach for a Minute Maid but will sniff out one of the (sadly diminishing in number) 100-per-cent-juice juicing stalls scattered around the city, the employees of which slice and squish oranges on the spot, for about the same price.