Fizzy drink producers including Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are changing their products’ formulas to avoid using cancer warning labels.
Industry tracker Beverage Digest reported that soda drink companies are changing the way they make the caramel coloring used in their products.
The announcement was issued after a consumer advocacy group released report saying that many popular cola drinks contain a caramel-coloring chemical that causes cancer in lab animals.
The chemical called 4-methylimidazole or 4-MIical 4-methylimidazole is not made of natural caramel but produced via a chemical process which involves ammonia.
Producers of fizzy beverages and some health agencies claim 4-MI has not been proven to be dangerous for humans yet and a consumer would have to drink over a thousand cans of soda a day to reach the doses tied to cancer in rodents.
Public health advocates, however, maintain that the regulator is allowing soft drink companies to needlessly expose millions of Americans to a chemical that is known to cause cancer.
“If companies can make brown food coloring that is carcinogen-free, the industry should use it,” said executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Michael Jacobson.
A California law mandates drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens use warning label and the cola companies said they have already changed their recipes in California and will do the same all across the country soon.
The decision includes Coca-Cola and PepsiCo which account for almost 90 percent of the US soda market.
Coca-Cola, however, said rather than 'changing its recipe' it was simply changing the production process of one of its ingredients.
“The caramel colour in all of our products has been, is and always will be safe, and The Coca-Cola Company is not changing the world-famous formula for our Coca-Cola beverages,” the company said in a statement.
“Over the years, we have updated our manufacturing processes from time to time, but never altered our Secret Formula.”
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