Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) is vegetable oil that has been mixed with the element bromine. Brominated vegetable oil is used as an emulsifier in citrus-flavored soft drinks such as Mountain Dew to help natural and artificial citrus flavors stay suspended in the drink. The bromine is mixed with the vegetable oil so that it will have a density identical to the water in the drink.
Consuming BVO leaves traces in 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 May 8, 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 togther with the fact that the man had an 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.
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.
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