Brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade?

When PepsiCo Inc. announced it would stop putting an obscure vegetable oil in its Gatorade right before the Super Bowl, one of the loudest cheers came from a high school student who had made it her mission to get rid of the ingredient. "I was like, 'Whoa,'" said Sarah Kavanagh, a 16-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who wanted to know how an oil that contains a chemical also found in flame retardants got into her favorite sports drink. After she posted a petition on Change.org asking Pepsi to remove it, more than 200,000 people signed. "I just wanted to make sure it was something that I could drink," said the teen. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reviews and approves most additives to food or drinks before they hit the marketplace. But others can bypass that process if they are deemed "generally recognized as safe" by the government or food companies and the experts they hire. If FDA suspects an ingredient deemed "safe" is actually harmful, the government can take action after a product hits the market, but it does not track how often that has happened. In one case, in 2010, the agency issued warning letters to four makers of popular caffeinated alcoholic drinks, declaring caffeine unsafe in alcoholic beverages. Under threat of product seizure, the companies stopped making the drinks. http://news.yahoo.com/brominated-vegetable-oil-gatorade-075517827--finance.html