Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

The popular drink Powerade is making some changes to their ingredients:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pow ... oil-n96786

I wonder if and how this may affect the taste of the drink. My favorite Powerades are the red drinks.

I drink a lot of Powerade. It's my liquid of choice. I just checked my fridge, and that ingredient is not on any of the bottles that I have. I have the Purple, Red, and Blue flavors. It must not be in all of the flavors.

Strange as it may seems...I've never drunk any Powerade Drink ! Shame on me.. but Vista : is this drink great ? t's a kind of energy drink, isn't it ?

So here's a nice article on the ingredient they are removing in question, which is brominated vegetable oil.

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bvo.asp

The gist of the article is that consumed in large quantities, this particular ingredient can have adverse health effects, which could require dialysis to remove large amounts of bromine your blood (and large amounts of bromine in your blood is not a good thing). The quantities in soft drinks are generally low, but for people who drink a lot of this stuff, it could lead to acute toxicity requiring medical care. The ingredient is used to suspend citrus-derived liquid, which would otherwise float at the top. So it could affect flavor, but chances are good that the soft drink manufacturers already have or will find an alternative that'll do the same thing.

The removal of the ingredient is happening because of consumer concerns over the safety of it. Chemists, toxicologists and other scientists also want to reinvestigate the chemical with new technologies and methods that were not available in the 70s, which is the last time brominated vegetable oil was seriously investigated. It seems to me the levels in the soft drinks were low enough to not be of much concern (unless you binge on soft drinks) for acute toxicity, but evidence has come to light since the 70s that even in small doses, it may accumulate over time in human tissue, the effects of which (if any) are unknown. Either way, the companies are responding to consumer concerns over the substance by phasing it out of their products. It definitely seems that some of the concerns are overblown hype, that's why Snopes rates the health claims over brominated vegetable oil as a mixture - there's hype, but that doesn't mean there's not some truth to it.

Very interesting information there Wolf Bird, thanks!!

Also, this morning I saw another article related to this and it is not just Powerade drinks that will be affected by this as it will cover a few other drink products by the Coke company as well:

http://news.yahoo.com/coke-drop-controv ... 23807.html

myau56 wrote:Strange as it may seems...I've never drunk any Powerade Drink ! Shame on me.. but Vista : is this drink great ? t's a kind of energy drink, isn't it ?

I really like it. I stopped drinking Gatorade when they turned it into that nasty G2 crap, so I moved to Powerade and I've never stopped drinking it since.

I've never drink Gatorade too ! Wolf Bird : thak you so much for this link and the explanations !