The Mountain Dew Ingredient Banned in 100 Countries
Did you know? Mountain Dew contains an ingredient that has been banned in 100 countries around the world.
What could 100 countries possibly know that we don’t?
There are now 10,000 additives in our food supply. For about 80 percent of these food additives, the FDA “lacked relevant information, including toxicity data, about the safe amount to eat” according to a new report.
In other words, what we once thought might be “Generally Regarded As Safe” or “GRAS”, might actually be “Generally Regarded As Suspicious.”
Brominated vegetable oil (also known as “BVO”) is one of the ingredients used in or food supply that has been called into question. It is found in sports drinks and citrus-flavored sodas . It is a chemical that keeps two liquids mixed together. It acts as a binding agent, also known as an emulsifier, and it prevents the flavoring and other ingredients found in our drinks from separating and floating to the surface.
It makes sense on a certain level, as we don’t want our drinks to look like a separated salad dressing with ingredients floating to the top. But this appearance might come with a hidden side effect. According to nutritionist Mira Calton and her husband Jayson Calton, Ph.D., “Because it competes with iodine for receptor sites in the body, elevated levels of [brominated vegetable oil] may lead to thyroid issues, such as hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease and cancer,” Calton says. As if that wasn’t scary enough, BVO’s main ingredient, bromine, is considered a toxic chemical. It’s been linked to all kind of health concerns, including organ system damage, birth defects, schizophrenia and hearing loss, which explains why it’s been removed or banned from food and drinks in more than 100 countries.
These health concerns and the fact that so many countries have removed BVO from their beverages was so concerning to one teenager that she launched an online petition that called for the removal of this ingredient from American beverages, landing her in the New York Times.
If you want to opt out of brominated vegetable oil here in the United States, simply skip the sports drinks and choose water. And if you’re filling up your cup at the soda fountain, instead of the lemon-lime and citrus flavored drinks, consider drinking something else. Coke and Pepsi responded to consumer pressure and pledged to remove this ingredient. What it will be replaced with? And is that replacement safe? Stay tuned. Whatever you do, remember, while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something. Focus on progress not perfection. Do what you can, where you are with what you have, remembering not to make “the perfect” the enemy of “the good.”
And together, leveraging our collective talents and voices, we can get these ingredients out of our food supply the way consumers around the world already have.
