One cup of bottled orange juice has 21 mcg iodine on average, while an orange itself only has 0.2 mcg. It takes something like four oranges to make a cup of orange juice, so you wouldn’t expect more than 0.8 mcg iodine in a cup. So where does that 21 mcg iodine come from?
It appears that the orange juice industry uses an iodine-based sanitizer (iodophor) in the storage tanks where they keep their orange juice. (And if I understand correctly, they store the orange juice for years sometimes, which is disturbing!) So I guess some of that iodine gets into the orange juice, which you drink.
By the way, bottled grapefruit juice also has strangely high iodine, so I imagine they probably use iodophor sanitizers too.
Enough with all the sanitizers!
If they didn’t use iodophor, they’d just use some other sanitizer. All commercial food, whether from factories or from restaurants, is most likely highly contaminated with sanitizer chemicals. We basically traded bacteria for sanitizer chemicals. I suspect this is one reason why commercial food seems to be uniquely bad for people’s health. Getting fresh food straight from local farms is a better way! Even though they probably use some sanitizers too, but I would hope it’s a lot less.
Sources
My sources about the citrus industry’s use of iodophor: Source #1 calls it “the traditional method of flood sterilizing bulk aseptic storage tanks with iodophor.” And Source #2 describes the process in detail.
My source for the iodine content of foods is the USDA iodine database. As you can see, most fruit has barely any iodine, so it’s pretty strange for orange juice to have iodine!
Note: This article is on my website about endocrine disruptors because excess iodine can damage thyroid function.
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