OK, I like lemon in my tea. Is that so bad? Unfortunately, in order to put the lemon in the tea I now I have to supply myself with lemon juice. I don’t have a lemon tree. Well, I do but it’s at my rental and I’m pretty sure my tenant wouldn’t want me going over to his house to get lemons from his back yard. I mean he said he’d be happy to have me get the lemons from the tree because there are plenty and he doesn’t use them, but I think he was just giving me lip service and doesn’t want me anywhere near his house. But we’re really getting away from the topic, so back to the lemon juice. If you don’t have a source of lemons, you need to buy lemon juice at the grocery store. Go ahead, pick up some lemon juice. I’ll wait. Got it? Now, read the ingredients. See that line about lemon oil? That’s not lemon juice. It’s a bitter oil from the lemon peel. They mix in lemon juice, water and lemon oil to make this concoction, and then they try to pass it off as lemon juice. I got some that said 100% lemon juice on the front, but the back had a list of ingredients, one of which was lemon oil. Hey, it’s a bitter oil! It makes the lemon juice bitter. One time I wrote to the email address of one of the bigger brands (think Real…) saying that I thought it was a shame that they had to advertise that it was 100% juice and that they put so much lemon oil in there it made the lemon juice bitter. they replied with an apologetic missive that stated: “We’re sorry you don’t like the lemon oil in our lemon juice. We’ll send your comments to our marketing department.” The marketing department? Hello? How about the research and development department? Wouldn’t the guys who make the product want to know that it sucks? What are they gonna do over in marketing, try to figure out how to label it so I won’t mind the bitter taste of the product? I’m seeing the memo now: “Try to draw attention away from the fact that our lemon juice is bitter and doesn’t taste at all like actual lemon juice.”
Feh.