Originally published January 29 2013
Gatorade to remove flame retardant chemical from its drinks (yeah, you've been drinking this for years)
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) Now you know that you've been saved from spontaneous combustion after a hard workout if you drank Gatorade. It's had an actual flame retardant chemical in it, and still does. The ingredient is called brominated vegetable oil (BVO), and its been patented in Europe as a flame retardant
A spokesperson for Gatorade's owner PepsiCo, Molly Carter, mentioned to reporters that Pepsi had been considering removing BVO for about a year, pending their discovery of a new and better replacement ingredient that wouldn't alter the taste. Molly claims the petition from change.org with over 200,000 signatures had little impact.
Ah yes, you can hear Gatorade consumers concerns: "Yum - this fire retardant sure is tasty. Wonder if I can get some pure BVO if they take it out?" Not to worry, Gatorade gulpers, it will be several months before a new "flavor and color emulsifier" will be replacing the BVO fire retardant: sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB).
Molly Carter asserted there's no rush or specific date set for getting the reformulated drinks out. The reformulated Gatorade flavors "will start rolling out in the next few months," Molly said."We're not recalling Gatorade. We don't think our products are unsafe. We don't think there are health or safety risks," she claimed.
A brominated vegetable oil (BVO) history
BVO has been banned as a food and beverage additive in Europe and Japan. But it has been used for decades in U.S. beverages such as Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Squirt, Fanta Orange, Sunkist Pineapple, Powerade Strawberry Lemonade or Fresca Original Citrus.
An observer from a gaming bar in the Atlanta, GA suburb of Marietta reports seeing video gamers stack up and drink a half-dozen or more Mountain Dews and gulp them down for their sugar and caffeine, keeping them stimulated and alert while gaming. They're also unwittingly getting a strong dose of BVO flame retardant.
Binging on these BVO beverages has resulted in medical treatments for skin lesions, memory loss, or nervous disorders. According to Scientific American magazine, studies have indicated that BVO can accumulate in body tissues.
Mice exposed to bromine compound fire retardants exhibited long-term negative health and fertility events in some studies. But maybe it's okay for humans. After all, BVO solutions are vegetable based. Unfortunately, the vegetables are soy and corn, which are usually GMO planted or GMO contaminated.
As early as 1977, the FDA approved BVO as a food or beverage additive at 15 parts per million. They based this figure on data from "industry studies." Wonder which industry that might have been? But since then, BVO has been completely banned from foods and beverages in Japan and Europe. Maybe they know something about those long-term effects from BVO tissue accumulation.
So what's the point of using BVOs in the first place? The heavy bromine atoms keeps synthetic artificial (tautology intentional) flavors from floating to the top of the beverage. Yum, toxic flavorings remaining constant throughout the beverage.
What about Gatorade's future SAIB replacement to ensure artificial flavor consistency? An Ontario, Canada test, " Effect of ... (SAIB) ingestion on the hepatobiliary function of normal human male and female volunteers," had 27 humans, male and female, drink orange juice without SAIB for one week then with SAIB for two weeks.
Blood samples were taken at intervals during each week checking markers for liver function issues. It was concluded "that ingestion of 20 mg SAIB/kg body weight daily for 14 days does not affect the hepatobiliary function of human volunteers."
Many trials conducted on more subjects for longer periods have been dismissed as too short with too few subjects if they were unfavorable to established food or medical products. Oh well, cheers and chuga-lug.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.latimes.com
http://www.scientificamerican.com
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml