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There has been more than a bitter twang in the glasses at British breakfast tables. Only five years ago, a typical supermarket own-label carton of orange juice could be bought for 76p for 1 litre. It now costs £1.79.

That's a rise of 134% since 2020, and it's up 29% just in the past year.

In cafes and restaurants it's a similar story - with £3.50 to £4 now a standard price point for a glass of basic OJ.

One colleague was outraged to be sent a bill for £9 for a glass of hangover-busting orange juice and lemonade at an unassuming little restaurant in Kent. Asked why so much, she was told that the orange juice - albeit freshly squeezed - accounted for £5.30 of the price.

Yet as costs have surged, the taste is changing too, with certain manufacturers substituting oranges for mandarins to cut costs.

The public is, if you like, being freshly squeezed.

There are all sorts of reasons for this: disease among crops, extreme weather, over-reliance on supply from a single nation, new rules for packaging and complexities around trade wars and Brexit.

All of this is compounded by grocery price inflation which, after hitting 17.5% in 2023, came down (to around 5.7% in August) but is rising once again.

Plus new figures for overall inflation released today put it at 3.8% - marking the 12th month in a row it is above the Bank of England’s 2% target.

It is a perfect storm.

Yet the problem is not isolated to orange juice - track the prices of all sorts of other groceries in supermarket aisles and you'll see a similar pattern. And so understanding what has happened to orange juice offers a glimpse into how our overall grocery bills suddenly seem so expensive.

It all prompts the question: is this storm a passing one, or are prices set to remain stubbornly high - and should we brace for them staying that way permanently?

Where else to start but in the orange groves of Florida where the industrialisation of OJ began as an initiative of the US Army during World War Two.

The US government was seeking a source of transportable Vitamin C for troops that didn't taste like turpentine.

Orange juice is nearly 90% water. So gently evaporating the water off the juice and freezing the concentrate allowed for transportability of a much-better-tasting product when water was later re-added.

WW2 ended before the troops got to try it, but it ended up being commercialised by what became the American soft drink giant, Minute Maid.

It was popularised by Bing Crosby, who, as a significant shareholder, would sing in ads and radio show jingles about frozen orange juice being "better for your health".

Western consumption of orange juice surged.

Flash forward to today and an estimated 2.5 billion gallons of orange juice are drunk each year - with about a tenth of that in the UK, where the market is still growing.

At an industrial unit in the Essex town of Basildon, green steel drums of frozen orange concentrate arrive from Brazil, overseen by Maxim McDonald.

His firm Gerald McDonald and Co is named after his great-grandfather, a pioneer who was importing orange........

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