“World Cup, Super Bowl, Wimbledon, think sports, think Gatorade with chemicals.” ~ Cynthia G. Creel

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“World Cup, Super Bowl, Wimbledon, think sports, think Gatorade with chemicals.” ~ Cynthia G. Creel

10 serves in a row, 10 points gave my team the advantage, I just kept saying again and again, “over the net to get the point, focus” I closed my eyes and bounced the ball, threw it in the air and delivered a served with a ball that floated back and forth and over the net. A served difficult to return and one more point was ours.

The coach could see on my face that I needed something to keep up the streak, I hear the whistle blow and a time out was called. The coach quickly gave me some directions to adjust what I was doing and I grabbed my bottle of Gatorade  and drank as I listened. I looked at the bottle and quickly thought of all the Gatorade my brothers had drank over the years with one brother become such a quality swimmer he had been offered full rides to many universities for his ability in the sport and academics. I did not excelled in swimming, but volleyball, I truly loved. It showed many times and may ways, but not always.

I came back on the court feeling good, I thought better than before yet, there was something different. I revved up for my serve, bounced the ball three times, said the thought in my head, “over the net to get the point, focus”, served another wining point. By the time I served one more time I felt my concentration leave. I ran the routine and the ball flew through the air to hit the top of the net falling short of it’s goal.

We went on to win the game, with other team members serving the final winning points. It was a match that is ingrained in my memory forever to look back and feel good about my performance and upon occasion ask why did I loose my winning streak. There could be tons of reasons why I lost my focus and maybe, just maybe part of that reason was what I drank. There is no telling at this point, except during the last three years of intensive studying I have come to the conclusion everything matters when it comes to the body and brain. How much it matters is the question.

On my journey for the truth has lead me to finding a different way of viewing the world. To see how one can change the lives of many for the better or the worse. Young or old we all have that power. According to the New York Times reporter  Stephanie Strom in a recent article PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade tells the story of “Sarah Kavanagh, (15 years old)  a high school student in Mississippi, started a petition to get PepsiCo (11) to stop using brominated vegetable oil. (BOV)” (1)

In the New York Times article Kavanagh questioned the use of BVO after studding the effects on line and  started an on-line petition (http://www.change.org/petitions/gatorade-don-t-put-flame-retardant-chemicals-in-sports-drinks) in the hopes of changing the drink. Collecting over 200,000 signatures got the attention of PepsiCo. “Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAI), an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration.”  (1)


It is reasonable to think this is the best course of action knowing the production of drinks have different guidelines in European Union as quoted from James Edward Bates for The New York Times “But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.” (2)

So why all the fuss, what is BVO?   According to the Web page What Is The Ingredient? “Brominated Vegetable oil is a vegetable oil that has the element Bromine(35 on the periodic table, second column from the right 3 rows down)  added to it to increase the density of the oil. The food manufacturer most likely uses this over regular vegetable oil to prevent the oil from floating to the top of the product.” (12)

So why would anyone think this might not be good for us to ingest?  As far back as 1997 a study on Bromism from excessive cola consumption showed, “In this case, excessive consumption of a cola with brominated vegetable oil caused a severe case of bromism.”  (9) sighting symptoms of  “headache, fatigue, ataxia, and memory loss which progressed over 30 days”. (9) With  hemodialysis used to solve the condition cutting half-life of bromide to 1.38 h. (9)

Other possibilities are listed in the sight  What Is The Ingredient? “Bromine is a halogen and displaces iodine, which may depress thyroid function. Evidence for this has been extrapolated from pre-1975 cases where bromine-containing sedatives resulted in emergency room visits and incorrect diagnoses of psychosis and brain damage due to side effects such as depression, memory loss, hallucinations, violent tendencies, seizures, cerebral atrophy, acute irritability, tremors, ataxia, confusion, loss of peripheral vision, slurred speech, stupor, tendon reflex changes, photophobia due to enlarged pupils, and extensor plantar responses.” (12)


These are very long list of what could happen, the only thing that matters most to you is if you are the person this can happen to.

According to Livingstrong are “Gatorade ingredients include: water, high fructose corn syrup (glucose-fructose syrup), sucrose syrup, citric acid, natural flavor, salt, sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, modified food starch, red 40 and glycerol ester of rosin.” (13)

The considerations are wide from glucose -fructose syrup that may affect blood pressure, sucrose syrup may affect  weight and becoming a type 2 diabetic or  citric acid affecting the condition of the teeth. (13)  I think we can all agree that water, if pure, would be considered a healthy  ingredient. So why not drink some pure water instead, it does save your body from having to process “the good, the bad and the ugly”.

We all  must decide for ourselves what we want to eat or choice not to eat. Having a mature eating habit of eating healthy, being on the path of True Health,  seems to help the body and mind the most.

I can not pin point the reason for the difference between the US and other parts of the world, except there are no regulations or laws (to my knowledge) in the US that keep BVO out of American food supply. Most likely because it has not been important enough to the general public. And if something isn’t helping us, it most likely holding us back. Only if we keep our food supply free of the unwanted, can we move forward. When  we all  become healthier as we fix the underlying problems that are  creating larger than life side effects we can not help, but do better in life. If people demand higher quality products from companies like PepsiCo, which is a global force affecting millions of people we can all do better. (11)  If the majority of  companies the world  have a higher purpose and make a profit we will all win in the long run.

We have a start by a 15 year old girl taking action peacefully and with others made a change happen. If we don’t buy it they won’t make it. The path to True Health is blocked by many obstacles that each one of us has to find out how to avoid. A start is to read the labels to know what would be ingested if consumed and the possible effects. Gatorade is only one drink of many that can be purchased and consumed. Knowing what is what makes life easy to understand what to do.

By Design ~ “Life is good By Design”

Note: No company mentioned in this article is considered to serve “healthy or unhealthy” food, they were only used as an example of how business works though their history and public information. The focus was the importance of reading labels being informed of what is being injected and how that possible can effect the body.
2-7-2013
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of By Design or Cynthia G. Creel.



Links:
(1) http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/gatorade-listens-to-a-teen-and-changes-its-formula/?ref=health

(2)  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/another-look-at-a-drink-ingredient-brominated-vegetable-oil.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

(3)  http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/pepsico_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org

4)  http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/food-additives/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier

(5) http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/FoodIngredientsPackaging/ucm094249.pdf

(6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223008/

(7) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223008/

(8) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20582854


(9) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9140329

(10) http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/bromism

(11)http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/pepsico_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org

(12) http://whatisthatingredient.com/ingredient.php?id=65

(13)  http://www.livestrong.com/article/63889-bad-gatorade-ingredients/#ixzz2KFeXuInL