This Popular Vegetable Oil That's Banned Across Europe and Japan

The US has refused to ban it (it's been pending safety studies for the last 44 years). Blamed for memory loss, nerve problems, damaged thyroids, infertility, and cancer, it's in more products than you can imagine. Don't wait, get it out of your life now.

This post is on Healthwise

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo Agree to Remove Flame Retardant Chemical from Their Products

Story at-a-glance

• Bowing to public pressure, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have both agreed to remove brominated vegetable oil (BVO) from all of their beverages in the near future

• BVO, first patented as a flame retardant, contains bromine, which has been found accumulating in people’s bodies and in women’s breast milk

• Bromine is a toxic endocrine disruptor that can damage your thyroid and lead to cancer, infertility, schizophrenia, and many other serious diseases

• BVO is banned across Europe and Japan, but in the US is still permitted under “interim” status, pending safety studies—for the last 44 years!

• FDA says studying BVO is not a priority for them at this time because it’s “not a public health risk” and shares interim status with saccharin, mannitol, and acrylonitrile

By Dr. Mercola

Bowing to public pressure, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have both agreed to remove brominated vegetable oil (BVO) from all of their beverages in the near future. BVO was first patented as a flame retardant, but has also been added to many American sodas for decades.

The problem is recent research shows that bromine builds up in your body, and in breast milk.

BVO has resulted in some soda-drinkers requiring medical attention for skin lesions, memory loss, and nerve problems related to bromine overexposure, which is why Europe and Japan have banned this chemical from their food and beverages.

Public pressure to remove BVO was suddenly fueled by a 2012 petition with more than 20,000 supporters, initiated by then-15-year-old girl Sarah Kavanagh who wanted chemicals removed from sports drinks like Gatorade.1

This is a great reminder about what a powerful force consumer pressure can be. If a 15-year-old girl can push through a petition with this much consequence, consider what YOU can do by voting with your pocket book, each and every day!

Out with BVO—In with Franken-Rosins

Coca-Cola vowed to remove BVO from its drinks by the end of 2014, but at present, it still appears to be included in some of Coca-Cola's products,2specifically Fanta Orange, Fanta Orange Zero, and Fresca Original Citrus.

PepsiCo removed BVO from Gatorade in 2013 and, following Coco-Cola’s May 5, 2014 announcement, said it would be dropping the chemical from the rest of its products, although it did not give a time frame.3

Coca-Cola says they add BVO to improve the stability of soft drinks, especially those with citrus flavorings. According to the San Diego Reader, “Without BVO, your favorite lemony-limy soda would look like the Gulf of Alaska in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez.4

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi companies deny that their decisions to remove BVO are in any way health-related. Coca-Cola says it plans to replace BVO with sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB) and glycerol ester of rosin (GEGR and GEWR).

The safety of these additives is debatable, as very few studies exist. Gum rosins received a negative safety rating by the European Food Safety Authority.5 Meanwhile, Germany and other countries have found safer, more natural substitutes for BVO.

For example, food chemist Walter Vetter at Germany's University of Hohenheim suggests American soda makers could easily replace BVO with hydrocolloids, which are used in many European sodas. Hydrocolloids are natural agents that achieve similar results, minus the health risks.6

It isn't clear why American beverage manufacturers are unwilling to swap out BVO for something like a hydrocolloid, but I would guess that their unwillingness to change most likely has something to do the cost.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo Are Not the Only Beverage Companies Adding BVO

Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) is vegetable oil, derived from corn or soy and bonded with the element bromine. It's added to beverages as an emulsifier, to prevent the flavorings from separating and floating to the surface.

According to Scientific American,7 the numerous bromine atoms in BVO weigh down the citrus flavoring so that it mixes with sugar water, or in the case offlame retardants, slows down chemical reactions that cause a fire (the effectiveness of which is debatable, by the way).

Brominated flame retardants have lately undergone intense scrutiny, because research has shown that they are building up in people's bodies, including women's breast milk, around the world.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi aren't the only beverages that contain this potentially hazardous ingredient, though.BVO is added to about 10 percent of all sodas sold in the US, as well as many energy and sports drinks and fruit drinks, including but not limited to the following brands:8,9

Diet Mountain Dew	Mountain Dew	Fanta Orange
Sunkist Pineapple	Gatorade Thirst Quencher Orange	Fresca Original Citrus
Powerade Fruit Punch and Strawberry Lemonade	Fresca Original Citrus	Crush Orange Soda
Safeway Grapefruit Diet Soda	Diet Sundrop	Squirt
Many Amp Energy Drinks	Great Value Sports Drinks	Wegmans Fruit Punch
Safeway Tom Collins Mix

Beyond Soda, There Are Several Other Sources of Bromine

BVO is not the only source of bromine exposure you should be concerned about. You can be exposed to other forms from a variety of sources and products, from brominated flour to your asthma medication:

Pesticides(specifically methyl bromide, used mainly on strawberries, predominantly in California)	Baked goods and flour: potassium bromate is added to many as a "dough conditioner"10,11	Drugs such as Atrovent Inhaler, Atrovent Nasal Spray, Pro-Banthine (for ulcers), and anesthesia agents
Plastics, like those used to make computers and some polyethylene beverage bottles	Flame retardantsused in fabrics, carpets, upholstery, mattresses, and children's products	Swimming pools and hot tubs: many use bromine-based treatments

Bromine Can Do Significant Damage to Your Thyroid

Bromines are endocrine disruptors, and part of the halide family, a group of elements that also includes fluorine, chlorine, and iodine. Studies suggest that BVO can build up in human tissues, and animal studies have linked large doses to reproductive and behavioral issues. One characteristic of bromine that makes it detrimental to your health is that it competes for the same receptors your body uses to capture iodine. If you are exposed to a lot of bromine, your body will not hold on to iodine, which is needed by every tissue, including your thyroid gland.

Iodine is crucial for proper thyroid function. Without iodine, your thyroid gland would be completely unable to produce thyroid hormone. Thirteen million Americans are estimated to have hypothyroidism, but the actual number is probably higher. Some experts claim that 10 to 40 percent of Americans have suboptimal thyroid function.

If you are one of those with suboptimal thyroid, your thyroid gland itself may not be the problem. You may instead be suffering from iodine deficiency brought on by inadequate consumption of iodine-rich foods and/or excessive bromine exposure, which ends up blocking your iodine uptake. This problem appears in conventional blood tests as a glandular problem, but is actually a problem of nutrition and/or toxicity.

The Risks of Bromine Reach Well Beyond Your Thyroid

The buildup of bromine in your body can result in iodine deficiency and bromine toxicity12 that can manifest a variety of serious health problems over time, including the following:

• Increased cancer risk: Iodine deficiency can increase your risk for cancers of the thyroid gland, breast,13 ovary, and prostate as a result of "bromide dominance"14
• Infertility: One animal study found that rats receiving one percent BVO in their feed suffered impaired fertility, and at two percent, they became completely infertile15
• Psychological/psychiatric problems: Because bromine is a central nervous system depressant, it can produce acute paranoia, psychosis, and other types of mental illness. In an audio interview, physician Jorge Flechas reported that between 1920 and 1960, at least 20 percent of all hospital admissions for "acute paranoid schizophrenia" were a result of common bromine exposure16
• Skin rashes and lesions (bromoderma tuberosum): Severe acne, folliculitis, papules, pustules, and other skin eruptions17
• Miscellaneous other problems: Fatigue, anorexia, abdominal pain, metallic taste, and cardiac arrhythmias (triggered by iodine depletion)18

Scientific American19 cites two case studies that illustrate how bromine toxicity can threaten your health. In 1997, emergency room doctors at University of California, Davis, reported a patient with severe bromine intoxication from drinking two to four liters of orange soda every day. He developed headaches, fatigue, ataxia (loss of muscle coordination), and memory loss.20

Then in 2003, a 63-year-old Ohio man developed ulcers on his swollen hands after drinking eight liters of Red Ruby Squirt every day for several months. The man was diagnosed with bromoderma, a rare skin hypersensitivity to bromine exposure. The patient quit drinking the brominated soft drink and months later recovered.21

Government and Industry Claim BVO Is 'Safe Enough'

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permitted the use of BVO on an interim basis—meaning, temporary approval pending additional study—way back in 1970.22 This effectively means they did not feel there was enough evidence to support the designation of GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) without further scientific investigation. But four decades is not temporary! Yes, 44 years later, those studies have not been done and BVO is STILL on the "interim" list. Why? It boils down to one more example of how FDA favors policies that protect big industry at the expense of public health.

According to the FDA, changing the status of BVO would be costly and is "not a public health priority" at this time. Other food additives that are in similar FDA limbo include saccharin, mannitol, and acrylonitrile. You are swimming in a sea of chemicals that are essentially untested—well, you and your children ARE the test subjects...23

In 1977, FDA established what it considered to be a safe limit for BVO in beverages—15 parts per million. But some scientists say that limit is based on thin data that is several decades old and should be revised.24,25 Toxicity testing has changed significantly over the past few decades. It is now possible to observe neurodevelopmental, hormonal, and reproductive changes across multiple generations of laboratory animals, not possible decades ago.

Why Ditching Soda Should Be a Crucial Step in Your Health Plan

There are many reasons to banish soda from your diet, beyond BVO. Soda and other sweetened commercial beverages have essentially no nutritional benefits, but are loaded with other chemical additives and high amounts of refined sugar, typically in the form of high fructose corn syrup—or even worse, artificial sweeteners. The average 12-ounce can of soda contains 40 grams of sugar, at least half of which is fructose, so one can of soda alone exceeds your daily recommended allotment of fructose (15 grams/day) if you're insulin resistant, which about 80 percent of Americans are.

Excess sugar has been unequivocally linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, and many other serious health problems, so the less sugar you consume, the better.

In order to break free, you may need to address the emotional component of your food cravings using tools such asEmotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). You can even tap along with Julie in the guided EFT video above. Be sure to check out our Turbo Tapping article, which is an extremely effective and simple tool to squelch your soda addiction quickly and painlessly. The most effective way to eliminate sugar cravings for good is to teach your body to use fat for fuel. Ditching carbs and adding healthy fat is a key component of this, which I discuss in my optimized nutrition plan. Intermittent fastingcan also help your body make the transition from burning sugar to burning fat as its primary source of fuel.

As for beverages, remember that nothing beats pure water when it comes to serving your body's needs for fluids. If you really feel the urge for a carbonated beverage, try sparkling mineral water with a squirt of lime or lemon juice, or sweetened with stevia or Luo Han, both of which are safe natural sweeteners. If you struggle with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or extra weight, then you have insulin sensitivity issues and would likely benefit from avoiding ALL sweeteners.

Sweetened beverages, whether sweetened by fructose, another form of sugar, or artificial sweeteners, are among the worst culprits in the fight against obesity and related health problems. Ditching ALL of these types of beverages can go a long way toward reducing your risk for chronic health problems and weight gain, not to mention your exposure to potentially dangerous chemical additives like BVO.

What Are GMOs?

From April 19th through April 25th we launch GMO Awareness Week. We set aside an entire week dedicated to providing you with information on GMOs and labeling initiatives. 

GMOs are a product of genetic engineering, meaning their genetic makeup has been altered to induce a variety of “unique” traits to crops, such as making them drought-resistant or giving them “more nutrients.” GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They also say that GMOs help ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any truth to these claims? I believe not. For years, I've stated the belief that GMOs pose one of the greatest threats to life on the planet. Genetic engineering is NOT the safe and beneficial technology that it is touted to be.

Help Support GMO Labeling

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)—Monsanto’s Evil Twin—is pulling out all the stops to keep you in the dark about what’s in your food. For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture. For example, Monsanto has made many claims that glyphosate in Roundup is harmless to animals and humans. However, recently the World Health Organization (WHO) had their research team test glyphosate and have labeled it a probable carcinogen.

Public opinion around the biotech industry's contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We're fighting back. That's why I was the first to push for GMO labeling. I donated a significant sum to the first ballot initiative in California in 2012, which inspired others to donate to the campaign as well. We technically "lost the vote, but we are winning the war, as these labeling initiatives have raised a considerable amount of public awareness.

The insanity has gone far enough, which is why I encourage you to boycott every single product owned by members of the GMA, including natural and organic brands. More than 80 percent of our support comes from individual consumers like you, who understand that real change comes from the grassroots.

Thankfully, we have organizations like the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) to fight back against these junk food manufacturers, pesticide producers, and corporate giants.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

• Non-GMO Shopping Guide
• GMA Boycott List
• GMA Traitor Brands

Together, Let's Help OCA Get The Funding They Deserve

Let’s Help OCA get the funding it deserves. I have found very few organizations who are as effective and efficient as OCA. It’s a public interest organization dedicated to promoting health justice and sustainability. A central focus of the OCA is building a healthy, equitable, and sustainable system of food production and consumption. That's why I'm proud to announce I will be matching donations up to $250,000 this week.

Please make a donation to help OCA fight for GMO labeling.

 

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/04/22/soda-flame-retardant-bvo.aspx

Go to Healthwise for more articles

10 Things the Processed Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

July 15, 2013

Story at-a-glance

• Processed foods wreak havoc on your health through many ‘sneaky’ ways, such as causing you to overeat and leading to addiction
• Processed foods are linked to infertility, cancer, malnutrition and obesity, as well as causing problems with your brain and mood
• Unlike whole foods, which contain a mix of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fiber and water to help you feel satisfied, processed foods stimulate dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter, making you feel artificially good even though the food lacks the nutrition your body needs
• When it comes to staying healthy, avoiding processed foods and replacing them with fresh, eating whole foods is the "secret" you've been looking for

By Dr. Mercola

Processed foods are typically loaded with excess sugar, salt, unhealthful fats, preservatives and other additives.
But you probably know this already. What you may not know about processed foods is the extent of the havoc they can wreak on your body, a closely guarded secret that the processed food industry doesn’t want you to know.
In short, though they may taste good and be easy to prepare, when you eat processed foods you’re exchanging convenience for your health.

10 Processed-Food Secrets the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

In the featured article,¹ Donna Gates, author of The Body Ecology Diet, explains 10 reasons why you might want to think twice the next time you’re tempted to eat processed foods. 

1. They’re Addictive and May Cause You to Overeat

Processing modifies or removes important components of food, like fiber, water and nutrients, changing the way they are digested and assimilated in your body.

Unlike whole foods, which contain a mix of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fiber and water to help you feel satisfied, processed foods stimulate dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter, making you feel good even though the food lacks nutrients and fiber. This artificial dopamine stimulation can lead to excessive food cravings and, ultimately, food addiction.

2. They’re Linked to Obesity

Processed foods are virtually guaranteed to contain additives that are linked to obesity. This includes monosodium glutamate (MSG), high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners and more. Plus, refined carbohydrates like breakfast cereals, bagels, waffles, pretzels, and most other processed foods quickly break down to sugar.,

This increases your insulin  and leptin levels, and contribute to insulin resistance, which is the primary underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease and condition known to man, including weight gain.

3. They Break Principles of Food Combining

Some nutrition and health experts, such as Wayne Pickering, believe that eating foods in certain combinations helps your body’s digestive processes to work more efficiently and absorb more nutrients. Wayne actually constructed a very useful food combining chart that can be obtained on his website.  According to one such premise, eating proteins and starches together, which is common in processed foods (such as a pepperoni pizza), inhibits digestion leading to putrification of your food, acidic conditions in your blood and supports disease-causing pathogens in your gut.

4. Processed Foods Lead to an Imbalanced Inner Ecosystem

The microorganisms living in your digestive tract form a very important "inner ecosystem" that influences countless aspects of your health. Processed foods disrupt this system, suppressing beneficial microflora and leading to digestive problems, cravings, illnesses and chronic disease. Beneficial organisms in your gut thrive on whole, unprocessed foods.

5. They’re Detrimental to Your Mood and Brain

Mood swings, memory problems and even depression are often the result of a heavily processed-food diet. In fact, the greatest concentration of serotonin, which is involved in mood control, depression and aggression, is found in your intestines, not your brain! Your gut and brain actually work in tandem, each influencing the other. This is why your intestinal health can have such a profound influence on your mental health, and vice versa – and why eating processed foods that can harm your gut flora can have a profoundly negative impact on your mood, psychological health and behavior.

6. Processed Foods Encourage ‘Eating on the Run’

Processed foods are quick and easy, making them ‘perfect’ to grab when you’re on the go. But eating on the go, or while you’re multi-tasking, can cause you to lose touch with your body’s natural signals telling you you’re full, leading to overeating and weight gain. It’s also more difficult for your body to digest properly when you’re busily engaged in other tasks.

7. Nutrition Labels can be Misleading

A processed food may be labeled ‘natural’ or ‘sugar-free,’ but that doesn’t make it healthful. For instance, the natural food label on a processed food has no standard definition and really no meaning at all. A "natural" product is meaningless as it can legally be genetically modified, full of pesticides or made with corn syrup, additives, preservatives and artificial ingredients.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also allows processed food manufacturers to use absurdly tiny serving sizes on their labels, which can lull you into a false sense of security when it comes to determining how much of each stated nutrient or toxin, like trans fat, you're actually consuming.

8. Processed Meats are Linked to Cancer

Processed meats are those preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or the addition of chemical preservatives, which includes bacon, ham, pastrami, salami, pepperoni, hot dogs, some sausages and hamburgers (if they have been preserved with salt or chemical additives) and more. Particularly problematic are the nitrates that are added to these meats as a preservative, coloring and flavoring.
The nitrates found in processed meats are frequently converted into nitrosamines, which are clearly associated with an increased risk of certain cancers. Meat cooked at high temperatures, as many processed meats often are, can also contain as many as 20 different kinds of heterocyclic amines, or HCAs for short. These substances are also linked to cancer.

9. Processed Foods May Increase Your Risk of Infertility and Malnutrition

Because processed foods are stripped of nutrients your body needs, you could be eating a large number of calories but still become malnourished. In just three generations, a nutrient-deficient diet can lead to infertility, which is on the rise in the US.² Plus, processed foods often contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients, which are also linked to reproductive problems.

10. Processed Foods Lead to a Long Shelf Life, Not a Long Human Life

Processed foods can last a long time on the shelf without going bad, thanks to their chemical cocktails of preservatives and other additives. Unfortunately, their makers put a lot of money and time into strategies to increase shelf life and create attractive packaging, with little attention put on the foods’ nutrient value or how it will actually detract from lasting health.

What Are the Worst Processed Food Additives?

When foods are processed, not only are valuable nutrients lost and dietary fiber removed, but the textures and natural variation and flavors are also lost. After processing, what's left behind is a bland, uninteresting "pseudo-food" that most people wouldn’t want to eat.  

Additives are added back in not only to slow spoilage, prevent fats and oils from going rancid, prevent fruits from turning brown, and fortify or enrich the food with synthetic vitamins and minerals to replace the natural ones that were lost during processing, but also to improve taste, texture and appearance. When reading product packages, here are some of the worst offenders to avoid if you want to protect your health (many of these are already banned in other countries due to health risks): 

Ingredient	Found in	Health Hazards
Coloring agents: blue 1, blue 2, yellow 5, and yellow 6	Cake, candy, macaroni and cheese, medicines, sport drinks, soda, pet food, and cheese	Most artificial colors are made from coal tar, which is a carcinogen
Olestra (aka Olean)	Fat-free potato chips	Depletion of fat-soluble vitamins and carotenoids. Side effects include oily anal leakage
Brominated vegetable oil (aka BVO)	Sports drinks and citrus-flavored sodas	Competes with iodine for receptor sites in the body, which can lead to hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, and cancer. The main ingredient, bromine, is a poisonous, corrosive chemical, linked to major organ system damage, birth defects, growth problems, schizophrenia, and hearing loss
Potassium bromate (aka brominated flour)	Rolls, wraps, flatbread, bread crumbs, and bagel chips	See bromine above. Associated with kidney and nervous system disorders, gastrointestinal discomfort
Azodicarbonamide	Breads, frozen dinners, boxed pasta mixes, and packaged baked goods	Linked to asthma
BHA and BHT	Cereal, nut mixes, gum, butter, meat, dehydrated potatoes, and beer	BHA may be a human carcinogen, a cancer-causing agent. BHT can cause organ system toxicity
Synthetic hormones: rBGH and rBST	Milk and dairy products	Linked to breast, colon, and prostate cancers
Arsenic	Poultry	EPA classifies inorganic arsenic as a "human carcinogen"

A Simple Step-by-Step Guide to Ditching Processed Foods

When it comes to staying healthy, avoiding processed foods and replacing them with fresh, whole foods is the "secret" you've been looking for. This might sound daunting, but if you take it step-by-step as described in my nutrition plan it’s quite possible, and manageable, to painlessly remove processed foods from your diet. 

Remember, people have thrived on vegetables, meats, eggs, fruits and other whole foods for centuries, while processed foods were only recently invented. Many of the top executives and scientists at leading processed food companies actually avoid their own foods for a variety of health reasons!  

I believe you, too, should spend 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed foods (unfortunately most Americans currently do the opposite). This requires that you plan your meals in advance. Ideally, this will involve scouting out your local farmer's markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales. You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, make sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you're short on time in the evenings (and you can use leftovers for lunches the next day). 

Further, by cutting out these high-glycemic foods you can retrain your body to burn fat instead of sugar. However, it’s important to replace these foods with healthy fats, not protein—a fact that’s often not addressed. I believe most people may need between 50-70 percent of their daily calories in the form of healthful fats, which include: 

Olives and olive oil	Coconuts and coconut oil	Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Organic raw nuts, especially macadamia nuts, which are low in protein and omega-6 fat	Organic pastured egg yolks and pastured meats	Avocados

If cravings are a problem for you, please review my article about how to wean yourself off processed food in seven easy steps. If you're currently sustaining yourself on fast food and processed foods, this is one of the most positive life changes you could ever make.

[-] Sources and References

• Wake Up World June 24, 2013

• ¹ Wake Up World June 24, 2013
• ² Wake Up World June 24, 2013
• ³ Wake Up World June 24, 2013

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/15/processed-food-secrets.aspx?