What is brominated vegetable oil made of

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Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Related audio. Book club — Deep Sniff by Adam Zmith. Book club — Lessons from Plants by Beronda Montgomery. Brominated vegetable oil. Too much cola can mess with your brain.

The effects of excess brominated vegetable oil explained. Ben Valsler You may have heard about sweet, fizzy drinks making people, children in particular, hyperactive. Latest audio. Book club — Vampirology by Kathryn Harkup.

Load more audio. Related articles. Opinion General dietary advice should be taken with a pinch of salt TZ We must move away from labeling foods as universally good or bad and start talking about dose. Load more articles. BVO has been used in soft drinks since — so why is it making headlines now? Much of the attention is due to an online petition on Change. On January 25, Gatorade announced that it would stop using BVO in its drinks, and said it was making the move in response to consumer demand.

Gatorade may be moving to eliminate BVO, but you can still find it in many soft drinks, especially ones that are citrus flavored. Does your favorite drink contain the controversial ingredient BVO? Here is a list drinks that contain BVO currently available on the market.

This is just one more reason to avoid sodas and sports drinks, which are also full of sugar or artificial sweeteners and empty calories. I have no problem with that, it has no nutritional value. But it is interesting to see how this came about. I suppose one can excuse Sarah, since like most high school students her scientific knowledge is very meagre, but meagre science still tends to spread through the Internet like a flame unless it is doused with proper science.

Sarah was concerned about brominated vegetable oil which is indeed found in some beverages. But it is not a flame retardant. But these are chemically quite different from brominated vegetable oil. Brominated vegetable oils distribute citrusy flavours that are normally not soluble in water throughout the beverage and, as an added bonus, they provide a cloudy appearance reminiscent of real fruit juice.

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.