Why Is Brominated Vegetable Oil in Mountain Dew?

Brominated vegetable oil has been used as a food additive since the 1930s to keep ingredients from separating in sodas and other beverages. ... "Instead of them kind of coalescing and ringing at the top — forming a film at the top of the soda — they're uniformly dispersed throughout," he said.

Is brominated vegetable oil bad for you?

Health concerns about BVO stem from one of its ingredients, bromine. Bromine can irritate the skin and mucous membranes (the moist lining of the nose, mouth, lungs and stomach). Long-term exposure can cause neurologic symptoms such as headache, memory loss, and impaired balance or coordination.

Does Mountain Dew contain brominated vegetable oil?

There's flame retardant in your Mountain Dew. That soda with the lime-green hue (and other citrus-flavored bubbly pops) won't keep your insides fireproof, but it does contain brominated vegetable oil, a patented flame retardant for plastics that has been banned in foods throughout Europe and in Japan.