CONSUMER PRODUCTS: Slush, Maybe; Juice, Hardly

Consumers swallowed the juice concoction, and its manufacturers reaped sweet profits. But last week a federal grand jury indicted three former top officials of a Chicago-based juice company, Bodine’s Inc., for allegedly selling 7 million cases of adulterated frozen orange juice between 1983 and 1985. While the company labeled the juice “100% pure,” the Food and Drug Administration says the product contained corn sugar, beet sugar, monosodium glutamate and effluent from a water-distillation process. The company allegedly used the ingredients because they were cheaper than the real thing and enabled Bodine’s to offer lower prices to supermarkets. The adulteration stopped before the company changed hands in 1985, but the former executives face potential fines and prison terms.