By michael - September, 12th 2014

Sports drink Powerade, manufactured and marketed by Coca-Cola Co., has finally decided to drop a controversial ingredient from its line of beverages after pressure from an online petition. PepsiCo's Gatorade, Powerade's rival, had already taken out the said ingredient from its existing drinks last year. According to The Seattle Times, the ingredient, brominated vegetable oil (BVO), had been the subject of a couple of Change.org petitions by Mississippi teenager Sarah Kavanagh after she found out that the said ingredient is patented as a flame retardant and has been banned in Europe and Japan.

Brominated vegetable oil, aka BVO, a common citrus drink ingredient in the United States, is banned in Japan, India and the European Union. Actually, it's banned in over 100 countries.

The questionable emulsifier is supposed to keep components of sports drinks and soda pop from separating, but is often called flame retardant for bromine's industrial uses as a flame retardant, gasoline additive and in pesticides.

Health concerns of anything bromine-related involve heavy-duty thyroid and neurological damage. The Iodine Project lists more. Bromine toxicity is serious. According to one naturopath, the effects of potassium bromate in modern refined breads are not only damaging to the thyroid – but combine that with chlorine in city tap water and you've got a weak thyroid that cannot properly uptake the iodine necessary to protect the body against radiation. Back to BVO…

BVO in beverages has been known about for …

Consumers are coming together quickly and efficiently to influence the world's biggest beverage companies in an unprecedented manner.

And, by consumer influence, the bottom-line fears are implicated. Coca-Cola dominates the soda market but seriously lags in the sports drink department. And, as Americans try to cut back on soda pop, this could mean a major dollar loss if Coca-Cola doesn't listen to legitimate consumer concerns.

So, what do you think of the substitutes for BVO: sucrose acetate isobutyrate and glycerol ester of wood rosin?

To be quite honest, I don't know either way if those ingredients make a good substitute or not, despite the fact that the former bromide components are definitely a bad idea!

As more and more Americans are cutting back on soda, sports drinks have become more important for beverage companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo Inc. While Coca-Cola has long reigned over rival PepsiCo on the soda front, it lags the company in the sports drink segment. As per the industry tracker Beverage Digest, Gatorade has nearly 64 percent of the sports drink market.

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