FDA Moves To Outlaw Brominated Vegetable Oil: What To Know About The Additive Banned In Dozens Of Countries - Forbes

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Topline

The Food and Drug Administration has moved to ban the use of brominated vegetable oil in fruit-flavored beverages like soda and sports drinks after multiple studies found it is harmful to the thyroid, liver and heart, as well as potentially causing neurological problems.

Key Facts

The FDA will on Friday publish its proposed rule identifying brominated vegetable oil, currently used in Sun Drop and some Walmart brand sodas, as a "health threat" and proposing that drink manufacturers be ordered to stop using it.

The ingredient was first identified as potentially harmful by the FDA in 1970—when it was declassified as "generally recognized as safe"—but companies have been allowed to use it at a level of 15 parts per million or lower since.

Major beverage brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi have voluntarily phased out the ingredient due to its health risks and it is already banned by the European Union, India, Japan and the state of California, which last month banned four food and drink additives linked to various diseases and became the first state to ban chemicals still allowed on a federal level.

Brominated vegetable oil, a stabilizer for the fruit-flavored oils that make drinks taste like orange, berry and fruit punch, was found to be "toxic to the thyroid" of rodents and pigs, the FDA said.

Studies have also suggested it causes bromism—a disease caused by chronic exposure to bromine that causes memory loss, tremors, slurred speech and other neurological symptoms—and leaves residues in the fat of the brain, liver and other organs.

Key Background

Brominated vegetable oil is exactly what it sounds like—vegetable oil that is modified with bromine. It keeps the citrus flavoring in fruit-flavored beverages from floating to the top of the drink, the FDA says, and most beverage makers have replaced it with alternative ingredients over the last few decades. The United Kingdom and India were the first jurisdictions to ban the additive, which they did in the 70s and 90s, respectively. Japan followed in 2010 and the European Union followed in 2008. BVO is one of several additives banned in the EU that is still allowed in the United States, including potassium bromate, which is used in American bread, titanium dioxide, azodicarbonamide and propylparaben.

Big Number

10. PepsiCo first agreed to remove BVO from Gatorade 10 years ago. The next year, in 2014, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo announced they would remove BVO from all their drinks, though Mountain Dew had the ingredient for years after.