Late in September a crate of berries stands at the end of a row, and it looks like the end of a story. The bushes are stripped, the pickers have moved on, and the fruit sits in the shade, finished.

It is not finished. Push a hand into the middle of the crate and the berries there can be warmer than the air around them. Nothing is rotting; nothing is wrong. The fruit is breathing. Every berry in the crate is still alive, still taking in oxygen, still burning the sugars and acids it spent the summer making — and, cut off from the plant, it has nothing left to burn but itself [1].

That warmth is a clock. It started when the stem broke, it runs faster the warmer the crate gets, and everything a juice maker does afterwards — pressing, freezing, bottling, the road to your door — is either a way of stopping that clock or a way of losing to it. Here is what the clock takes, and why we think the shortest road from field to bottle is still the best one.

A picked fruit is still breathing

Harvest does not kill a fruit. It disconnects it. Postharvest science begins from that observation: every fresh fruit and vegetable is living tissue that goes on respiring after it is picked, and respiration is the slow spending of its reserves [1]. On the plant, those reserves are topped up. In the crate they only go down.

How fast they go depends on two things. The first is the fruit itself. The storage handbook of the US Department of Agriculture sorts crops by how hard they breathe in the cold: apples sit in the low class, alongside potatoes and onions, while strawberries, raspberries and blackberries sit in the high class [1]. The rule of thumb is that the faster a crop respires, the shorter its life after harvest — which is why an apple is a fruit that can wait, and a soft berry is one that cannot.

The second is temperature. Chemistry speeds up with heat, and living chemistry is no exception: as a working rule, the rate of these reactions doubles or triples with every rise of 10 °C [1]. The handbook's own illustration is stark. A crop that keeps for 13 days at 20 °C can keep for as long as 100 days at 0 °C — and for no more than 4 days at 40 °C [1]. An hour in the sun and an hour in the cold room are not the same hour.

What the clock takes first

The most fragile thing in the crate is vitamin C. It is the nutrient postharvest researchers watch most closely, because it is usually the first to go. The standard review of the subject, by Lee and Kader, put it plainly: freshly harvested fruits and vegetables contain more vitamin C than those held in storage, and temperature management after harvest is the most important factor in keeping it [2].

In one classic experiment cited in the review, kale kept at 0 °C lost between 2% and 5% of its vitamin C in two days. At 20 °C — an ordinary room — it lost between 61% and 89% in the same two days, depending on how quickly the leaves wilted [2]. Fresh spinach held at room temperature has been recorded losing all of its vitamin C in under four days, and fresh peas half of theirs within a week [3].

Spinach and peas sit in the handbook's fastest-breathing class [1], and a berry is not a leaf. But fruit has a weakness of its own: it bruises. The same review notes that strawberries and other berries lose vitamin C quickly once they are bruised in harvesting, and that bruised tomato tissue carried about 15% less vitamin C than the sound fruit [2].

For a berry such as sea buckthorn this is not a detail. Sea buckthorn growing on the coasts of Europe may carry 120–315 mg of vitamin C in every 100 g of fresh fruit [4], and that is precisely the part of the orange berry that the hours after picking put at risk.

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Six hours in the sun

How short is the window? The cleanest answer comes from strawberries, the most closely studied soft fruit there is. In 1995 a team of postharvest researchers took three varieties and did one simple thing: half the fruit went straight into forced-air cooling, and half waited 6 hours at 30 °C first — a warm afternoon at the edge of a field. Then all of it was stored the same way: a week at 1 °C and a day at 20 °C [5].

Six hours was enough. The delayed berries lost about 50% more water, were 14–22% softer, and came out of storage with greater losses of vitamin C and of their sugars than the fruit cooled at once [5]. The damage was done in an afternoon and collected a week later.

Not every berry runs to the same clock. When researchers stored four kinds of berry for up to 8 days at temperatures from 0 to 30 °C, strawberries and highbush blueberries held their vitamin C, while raspberries and lowbush blueberries lost some of theirs [6]. Each fruit keeps its own time, which is why a grower has to know the berry and not only the calendar.

And a clock can be made to run faster. A bruised or broken berry is a berry whose cells have been opened: its enzymes, the compounds they act on, and the air all meet at once. In one experiment, apple juice made in a high-speed blender showed roughly 4.5 times the activity of the browning enzyme polyphenol oxidase found in juice from a slow masticating juicer [7] — the same chemistry that turns a dropped apple brown, and one of the reasons we press slowly rather than shred.

Two ways to stop a clock

There are only two honest ways to stop it. One is to press the fruit while it is still itself and seal the juice in a bottle. The other is to freeze it.

Sea buckthorn shows the second way better than any fruit we know. Its berries sit tight against thorny branches and do not come away willingly, so in commercial orchards they are often not picked at all. The fruit-bearing branches are cut, and the whole branch goes into the cold: one technical survey describes quick-freezing to −23 °C within 12 hours, and freezer chambers that reach −40 °C, after which the frozen berries break cleanly from the wood [8]. Growers' guidance from Ontario describes the same sequence at −20 °C [9]. The clock is not slowed. It is stopped. That is the fruit behind Sunthorn.

Freezing has a better record than its reputation. When researchers compared eight fruits and vegetables — strawberries and blueberries among them — kept fresh in a refrigerator or frozen, the vitamin content of the frozen produce was comparable to, and occasionally higher than, that of the fresh [10]. A two-year study of supermarket produce found the same pattern: frozen matched fresh in most comparisons, and beat produce that had spent five days in a refrigerator more often than it lost to it [11]. (That second study was funded by the Frozen Food Foundation, which is worth knowing as you read it.)

The first way — the press — works on the same principle. The reviewers who compared fresh, frozen and canned produce concluded that fresh is often best for vitamin C on one condition: that it undergoes minimal storage, whether at room temperature or in the cold [3]. A press close to the field is simply the shortest storage there is.

Timing matters before the stem breaks, too. When researchers followed aronia on two organic farms in Poland from July to October, the anthocyanins — the pigments that make the berry almost black — rose until mid-August on the lowland farm and then fell; the best harvest window there ran from 4 to 18 August. On the farm at higher altitude it ran from 7 August to 18 September [12]. A press within reach of the hedge can wait for the berry. Aronia is the whole of Moon Berry.

Why the long chain exists

The long chain exists because it solves a real problem: fruit ripens in a few weeks, and people want juice all year.

The industrial answer is concentration. Water is evaporated from the juice under vacuum; a juice-processing manual published by the FAO calls vacuum concentration the process most responsible for the wide availability, economy and popularity of fruit juices, and notes that some juices can be taken beyond 70 °Brix — up to a 10-fold increase in solids — and then held for extended periods, shipped, or stockpiled for future use [13]. At the other end of the journey the water is put back. European law is exact about the difference: “fruit juice” is the product obtained from the fruit, while “fruit juice from concentrate” is the product obtained by reconstituting concentrated juice with drinking water [14]. They are two separate legal names, and the label has to carry the right one. We have written about what else happens to juice between the press and the shelf.

Whole fruit travels through time as well. In a controlled atmosphere — 2 to 3 percent oxygen, 1 to 4 percent carbon dioxide, and cold [13] — some varieties of apple are stored for 6 to 12 months [15]. It works because the apple is a slow breather to begin with — and it is why an apple in May may be older than it looks. The vitamin C in apples, Lee and Kader note, can drop to less than 50% of the original amount after 6 months of cold storage [2].

A long chain, in other words, is a set of very good techniques for making fruit wait. A short chain is the decision not to make it wait.

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What “short” actually means

“Short” sounds like a distance. In European policy it was defined as something else. The EU's rural development regulation of 2013 described a short supply chain as one “involving a limited number of economic operators, committed to co-operation, local economic development, and close geographical and social relations between producers, processors and consumers” [16], and the rules for funding such chains drew the line at no more than one intermediary between farmer and consumer [17]. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre, surveying short chains across the Union, settled on the same idea: the food is identified by, and traceable to, a farmer, and the number of intermediaries between farmer and consumer is minimal or, ideally, nil [18].

Hands, then, not kilometres — and it is worth being exact about why. In the best-known analysis of the question, a study of households in the United States, transport as a whole accounted for 11% of the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of food and the final delivery from producer to retailer for 4%, while 83% arose in production itself [19]. The Joint Research Centre makes the same point from the other side: “local” is not, by itself, enough to ensure an environmental benefit [18]. So we do not make the case for a short chain on carbon. We make it on time. Fewer hands means fewer waits, and every wait is the clock running.

It is also why we try to be plain about our own map. Our juices are pressed and bottled in Latvia. The sea buckthorn is Latvian, and aronia grows across the Baltic region. But many of the fruits we work with — noni, graviola, açaí — do not grow in Europe at all, and for those the chain cannot be short in kilometres. It can still be short in hands, and it can still be traceable to a grower, which is the part of the definition that matters most.

What to do this week

1. Read the name, not the front of the pack. The legal name tells you which chain a juice travelled: “fruit juice”, or “fruit juice from concentrate” [14]. Our juices are not from concentrate.
2. Treat an open bottle like fresh fruit. Pressing does not stop the clock for ever, and opening the bottle starts it again. In one study, freshly pressed juices kept at about 28 °C lost vitamin C, phenolics and antioxidant capacity significantly within 48 hours, while the same juices in a refrigerator were essentially unchanged to day 5 [20]. Keep it cold, keep it closed, and follow the label once it is open.
3. Buy berries the way a press does. In season, buy close to the grower and chill the fruit as soon as you are home. Out of season, buy frozen without apology [10] [11].
4. If you pick your own, beat the afternoon. Keep the crate in the shade, do not pile it deep — bruised berries lose vitamin C quickly [2] — and chill the fruit the same day. Six warm hours were enough to mark a strawberry a week later [5].

A short supply chain, in short

A short supply chain is one with few hands and little waiting between the grower and you. Picked fruit is still alive and keeps spending its reserves — fastest when it is warm or bruised — so the surest way to keep what it grew is to press or freeze it soon after harvest, close to the field.

One caution: these are tart, undiluted juices — if you live with reflux, dilute them and take them with food.

Back to the crate

The crate at the end of the row is still warm. That warmth is the fruit spending itself, and it will go on until someone cools it, freezes it or presses it — or until there is nothing left worth pressing.

Everything in a short supply chain follows from taking that seriously: growing fruit within reach of a press, cutting the sea buckthorn branch and sending it straight into the cold, waiting for the aronia rather than for the lorry, and keeping the number of hands small enough that someone can always say where a bottle began. It is not a romantic idea. It is what the fruit asks for, written in hours.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly does fruit lose vitamin C after picking?

It depends on the crop and, above all, on temperature. In an experiment cited by Lee and Kader, kale lost 2–5% of its vitamin C in two days at 0 °C but 61–89% at 20 °C [2], and fresh spinach at room temperature has lost all of it in under four days [3]. Strawberries left for 6 hours at 30 °C before cooling showed greater vitamin C losses a week later [5].

What is the difference between juice and juice from concentrate?

Under EU Directive 2001/112/EC, “fruit juice” is obtained from the fruit itself, while “fruit juice from concentrate” is made by reconstituting concentrated juice with drinking water [14]. Concentration removes water so that juice can be stored and shipped; some juices are concentrated up to 10-fold [13]. The legal name on the label tells you which of the two is in the bottle.

What is a short supply chain?

EU rural development law defined it as a supply chain “involving a limited number of economic operators”, with close relations between producers, processors and consumers [16], and the funding rules allowed no more than one intermediary between farmer and consumer [17]. The emphasis is on few hands and food traceable to a farmer, not on distance alone [18].

Are frozen berries as nutritious as fresh?

On the published evidence, largely yes. A comparison of eight fruits and vegetables, including strawberries and blueberries, found the vitamin content of frozen produce comparable to, and occasionally higher than, fresh [10]. A two-year retail study found frozen matched fresh in most comparisons, and more often beat produce kept five days in a refrigerator than lost to it [11].

References

1. Saltveit ME. Respiratory metabolism. In: Gross KC, Wang CY, Saltveit M, eds. The Commercial Storage of Fruits, Vegetables, and Florist and Nursery Stocks. Agriculture Handbook 66. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service; revised 2016.
2. Lee SK, Kader AA. Preharvest and postharvest factors influencing vitamin C content of horticultural crops. Postharvest Biology and Technology. 2000;20(3):207–220. doi:10.1016/S0925-5214(00)00133-2
3. Rickman JC, Barrett DM, Bruhn CM. Nutritional comparison of fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Part 1. Vitamins C and B and phenolic compounds. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 2007;87(6):930–944. doi:10.1002/jsfa.2825
4. Koskovac M, Cupara S, Kipic M, Barjaktarevic A, Milovanovic O, Kojicic K, Markovic M. Sea buckthorn oil — a valuable source for cosmeceuticals. Cosmetics. 2017;4(4):40. doi:10.3390/cosmetics4040040
5. Nunes MCN, Brecht JK, Morais AMMB, Sargent SA. Physical and chemical quality characteristics of strawberries after storage are reduced by a short delay to cooling. Postharvest Biology and Technology. 1995;6(1–2):17–28. doi:10.1016/0925-5214(94)00048-W
6. Kalt W, Forney CF, Martin A, Prior RL. Antioxidant capacity, vitamin C, phenolics, and anthocyanins after fresh storage of small fruits. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 1999;47(11):4638–4644. doi:10.1021/jf990266t
7. Park S-Y, Kang T-M, Kim M-J, Kim M-J. Enzymatic browning reaction of apple juices prepared using a blender and a low-speed masticating household juicer. Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry. 2018;82(11):2000–2006. doi:10.1080/09168451.2018.1497943
8. Milea D, Visan AL, Bogdanof CG. A study regarding the actual state of art for technologies and equipment's used to separate the sea buckthorn fruits from harvested branches. Annals of the University of Craiova – Agriculture, Montanology, Cadastre Series. 2019;49:379–388.
9. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Specialty Cropportunities: Sea Buckthorn. 2012.
10. Bouzari A, Holstege D, Barrett DM. Vitamin retention in eight fruits and vegetables: a comparison of refrigerated and frozen storage. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 2015;63(3):957–962. doi:10.1021/jf5058793
11. Li L, Pegg RB, Eitenmiller RR, Chun J-Y, Kerrihard AL. Selected nutrient analyses of fresh, fresh-stored, and frozen fruits and vegetables. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. 2017;59:8–17. doi:10.1016/j.jfca.2017.02.002
12. Zielińska A, Siudem P, Paradowska K, Gralec M, Kaźmierski S, Wawer I. Aronia melanocarpa fruits as a rich dietary source of chlorogenic acids and anthocyanins: 1H-NMR, HPLC-DAD, and chemometric studies. Molecules. 2020;25(14):3234. doi:10.3390/molecules25143234
13. Bates RP, Morris JR, Crandall PG. Principles and practices of small- and medium-scale fruit juice processing. FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 146. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; 2001.
14. Council Directive 2001/112/EC of 20 December 2001 relating to fruit juices and certain similar products intended for human consumption. Official Journal of the European Communities, L 10, 12.1.2002, p. 58; consolidated text as amended by Directive (EU) 2024/1438.
15. Kader AA. Controlled atmosphere storage. In: Gross KC, Wang CY, Saltveit M, eds. The Commercial Storage of Fruits, Vegetables, and Florist and Nursery Stocks. Agriculture Handbook 66. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service; revised 2016:22–25.
16. Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2013 on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). Official Journal of the European Union, L 347, 20.12.2013, p. 487. Article 2(1)(m). Repealed by Regulation (EU) 2021/2115.
17. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 807/2014 of 11 March 2014 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013. Official Journal of the European Union, L 227, 31.7.2014, p. 1. Article 11(1).
18. Kneafsey M, Venn L, Schmutz U, Balázs B, Trenchard L, Eyden-Wood T, Bos E, Sutton G, Blackett M; Santini F, Gomez y Paloma S, eds. Short Food Supply Chains and Local Food Systems in the EU. A State of Play of their Socio-Economic Characteristics. JRC Scientific and Policy Reports, EUR 25911 EN. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union; 2013. doi:10.2791/88784
19. Weber CL, Matthews HS. Food-miles and the relative climate impacts of food choices in the United States. Environmental Science & Technology. 2008;42(10):3508–3513. doi:10.1021/es702969f
20. Khaksar G, Assatarakul K, Sirikantaramas S. Effect of cold-pressed and normal centrifugal juicing on quality attributes of fresh juices: do cold-pressed juices harbor a superior nutritional quality and antioxidant capacity? Heliyon. 2019;5(6):e01917. doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01917

This article is for education and is not medical advice. If you have a diagnosed condition, are pregnant or take regular medication, talk to your doctor or pharmacist before changing your diet.