Brominated vegetable oil
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Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) is vegetable oil that has had atoms of the element bromine bonded to it. Brominated vegetable oil is used as an emulsifier in citrus-flavored soft drinks such as Mountain Dew and Gatorade to help natural citrus flavors stay suspended in the drink and to produce a cloudy appearance.
The addition of bromine increases the density of the oil, and the amount of bromine is carefully controlled to achieve a density that is the same as the water in the drink. As a result, the BVO remains suspended in the water instead of forming separate layers.
Long after human consumption of BVO, traces remain in the body fat; it is unclear whether these traces pose any health risk. Many people fear that BVO is harmful, but there have been few scientific studies to demonstrate this. In one case, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on 8 May 2003, a man who drank eight liters of Ruby Red Squirt daily had a reaction that caused his skin color to turn red and produced lesions diagnosed as bromoderma. The excessive quantities together with the fact that the man had a higher than normal sensitivity to bromine, made this an unusual case.
A Pepsi product website notes that BVO has been used by the soft drink industry since 1931.
[edit] Restrictions
Standards for soft drinks in India prohibit the use of BVO.
Title 21 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Sec. 180.30 (21CFR180.30) imposes certain restrictions on the use of BVO as a food additive in the United States. BVO is one of four substances that the Food and Drug Administration has defined as interim food additives; the other three are acrylonitrile copolymers, mannitol, and saccharin.
