The world’s largest beverage-maker, Coca-Cola, announced today that it would remove a controversial ingredient from some of its US drinks brands by the end of this year. The ingredient, called Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO), had been the target of online petitions by a teenager from Mississipi who wanted it out of PepsiCo’s Gatorade and Coca-Cola’s Powerade. Rival company PepsiCo removed this ingredient from its sports drink Gatorade last year.
Brominated Vegetable Oil is a mixture of plant derived triglycerides which have been treated with bromine. It is used to ensure that the flavours in a fruit-flavoured drink are distributed more evenly and is found in Coca-Cola fruit drinks such as Fanta, and sports drinks such as Powerade.
Studies have shown that consumption of soft drinks containing BVO has been linked to negative health effects, including memory loss, and skin and nerve problems. This is probably one of the reasons why the use of BVO as a food additive is prohibited in the European Union and Japan.
Although BVO was dropped from the US Food and Drug Administration’s “Generally Recognised as Safe” list of food ingredients in 1970, drinks companies in the US are allowed to use BVO at up to 15 parts per million.
Unlike in the past, consumers today are very concerned about what they eat and drink. They pay close attention to labels and prefer natural ingredients to artificial food additives. At the end of the day, the consumer’s preferences and opinions do matter. Coca-Cola’s decision to remove BVO from its beverages is solid proof for this!