Coke and Pepsi-Controversial ingredients being used in drinks

Coca Cola is the world’s largest beverage company is having controversy these days because of abandoning ingredients in its drinks. According to the company it has planned to remove brominated vegetable oil from all of its drinks in US by this year-end that has been claimed by food activist.

Addition to this, BVO known as Brominated vegetable oil will be taken out of individually ready to drink beverages plus fountain machine formulas, mentioned by representative of Coca-Cola Co. (KO) Josh Gold in a yesterday. BVO has drawn attention from social media, online forums and thousands of sign petition against it. BVO use to work as stabilizer in drinks like Powerade, which helps to prevent ingredients from separating. PepsiCo Inc. has removes BVO from Gatorade last year.

The United States Food and Drug agency Administration let beverage companies to use BVO up to 15 parts per million , though after some time they dropped it from its general recognized as safe list of food ingredients in 1970.

According to Mayo Clinic, Health issues are more concern about BVO as its use of bromide, the element found in brominated flame retardants. Atlanta based Company, will switch to use sucrose acetate isobutyrate or glycerol ester of rosin –alone or in combination.

Gold said in a statement that “All of their beverages, including those with BVO are safe and always been to comply with all the rules and regulation in the countries where ever they are being sold and the safety and the quality of our products is our highest priority.

Gold added that two varieties of Coke’s Powerade sports drink that is fruit punch and strawberry lemonade are already switched to glycerol ester of rosin.

Social activists claimed that BVO is banned in all over Europe and Japan and become more concerned when they learned about the ingredients was in drinks.

PepsiCo was using BVO in Mountain Dew and Energy drinks addition to Gatorade.

“We regularly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with all regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers expect,” Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for the Purchase, New York-based company, said in a statement. “We removed BVO from Gatorade in 2013 in response to our consumers and since that time we have been actively working to remove it from the rest of our product portfolio.”

According to Jeff Dahncke , spokesman of Purchase , New York based company “ We evaluate our formulas on regular basis to ensure that they comply with all the regulations and meet the high quality standard for our consumers expectation. In addition to this we have removed BVO from Gatorade in 2013 because a consumer response and since then they have been working actively to remove from its rest of its our product portfolio.