digitalbeachbum wrote:

OK. I know there is some weird shit in the foods and drinks I consume, but this is whacked out.

"brominated vegetable oil"

Sorry... a fire retardant in Gatorade, Powerade, Fanta and Mountain Dew? Really?

I dislike the response that "they have heard rumblings from the public for several years" and took so long to remove the ingredient. Holy shit. Remind me not to use their products again.

http://news.msn.com/us/gatorade-to-remove-controversial-ingredient?ocid=ansnews11

They don't put flame retardant directly into the the drink, they just use the chemical bromine, which when mixed with other chemicals creates flame retardant. This is just ignorant fear mongering and they will take out the brominated vegetable oil and replace it with something like carboxymethyl cellulose. 

The fact is that the small amounts of bromine they use (less than 15ppm) are not harmful. People with bromine sensitivities that consume a lot of pop. For example, one recent case involved a man in 2003 who consumed 8 liters of Red Ruby Squirt every day for several months. He developed ulcers and swollen hands which went away on their own with no medication after he quit drinking it. He also had a "rare" skin sensitivity to bromine to begin with. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200305083481921

Don't drink 8 liters a day of any pop (or really anything other than water, even 8 liters of whisky a day can be harmful to your health), forget the bromine, it is extremely unhealthy due to the sugars alone and will probably cause you an early death. Your largest danger from drinking that much pop is not the bromine, it is getting diabetes which is one of our nations leading killers. The odds of you ever getting bromism are extraordinarily low, literally a handful of people since that 1970s. The odds of you getting diabetes from that much consumption are about 1 in 4.