It also does a great job of keeping citrus oils, plus other fragrance or flavour oils, just where they should be in a beverage — suspended. But is BVO safe as a food additive? On average, soft drinks manufacturers use about 8 parts per million — not quite enough to totally prevent creaming, though it slows it way down.
Our brominated man was no normal soda-pop drinker. Research shows that Americans drink about litres of soft drinks per year per capita. Our brominated man said he drank 2 to 4 litres of BVO-containing soda every single day for 6 months leading up to his hospital stay. That much soda, in that amount of time, brought him a case of bromism.
Typically, bromism is an easy condition to fix. A patient is loaded with saline, a sodium chloride solution, and significant improvement is seen. But our brominated man required more than saline. He had to undergo hemodialysis to clear out all that bromide and help restore his ion balance. Raychelle Burks on the counterintuitive sedation effect of brominated vegetable oil in otherwise sugary, caffeinated drinks.
Next week, another compound you may find in the cupboards at home…. This simple inorganic compound is just NaClO — the only distinction from that common salt is that instead of a chloride ion it has hypochlorite with an added oxygen atom, but the transformation in the substance is striking. Request Appointment. Healthy Lifestyle Nutrition and healthy eating. Products and services. Should I be worried that my soda contains brominated vegetable oil?
Answer From Katherine Zeratsky, R. With Katherine Zeratsky, R. Thank you for Subscribing Our Housecall e-newsletter will keep you up-to-date on the latest health information. Please try again. Something went wrong on our side, please try again. National Center for Toxicological Research. Accessed March 22, Kim J-M, et al. Identifying method validation and measurement uncertainty of brominated vegetable oil in soft drinks and carbonated waters commonly consumed in South Korea.
Food Chemistry. Iwakoshi K, et al. Department of Health and Human Services and U. Department of Agriculture. Brominated vegetable oil.
Title Food and Drugs. The citrus flavour that is destined for use in drinks is a complex mix of compounds extracted from the rind of citrus fruits. Some of these are not water soluble, meaning that they would either rise to the top or sink to the bottom if the extract were used to flavour a beverage without any further chemical manipulation. It is during this further manipulation that brominated vegetable oil comes into the picture.
The citrus flavours extracted from the rind that do not dissolve in water do dissolve in oil. But of course that would not be of much help in concocting a beverage because the flavoured oil, being immiscible with, and lighter than water, would just separate and rise to the top. However, adjusting the specific gravity of the oil to match that of water allows the oily flavour droplets to be evenly distributed through the drink. True, the oil still remains immiscible with water, but that is not regarded as a detriment.
Quite the opposite. The resulting cloudy appearance conjures up images of fruit juice. But how do you increase the specific gravity, in other words, the weight of the oil to achieve this desired effect? You brominate it! Bromine atoms are heavy so that once they become incorporated into the structure of the vegetable oils, they increase the molecular weight to a degree that the oil has roughly the same specific gravity as water. But experts agree that a sweeping comparison of the additive to flame retardant lacks nuance.
It has been patented as one but is not the same as the brominated flame retardants in popular use. Experts also say it has also not been conclusively proven that drinking the amount of brominated vegetable oil found in soft drinks will lead to all of the negative health effects mentioned in the post. However, scientists agree more information is likely needed to broaden understanding of the ingredient's ability to build up in the human body over time, and that some people drinking large amounts of soda at once have experienced adverse effects.
That caution is reflected by the FDA's categorization of BVO as allowed in certain amounts on an "interim" basis, as well as the banning of the ingredient in some countries overseas. Reach him at irichardson registermedia. Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Facebook Twitter Email. Show Caption. Hide Caption. A court has sided with the makers of Diet Dr Pepper after being accused of false advertising.
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