Soda additive linked to cancer, report says

[Low Pan]

Soda additive linked to cancer, report says




NBC - For many of us, a daily drink of cola is pretty common, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest has some serious concerns over dark colored sodas and is now is asking the Food and Drug Administration to ban certain "caramel coloring."

"The government conducted studies several years ago showing contaminants in the caramel coloring that caused cancer in laboratory animals," says the CSPI's Michael Jacobsen.

The caramel coloring found in some sodas is made by reacting sugars with ammonia resulting in what some studies found were carcinogenic chemicals. That type of caramel coloring can also be found in things like some soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, whiskey or even dark beers.

The CSPI says it's all unnecessary.

"Caramel coloring doesn't add nutritional value it's not a preservative its only there for the color," Jacobsen says.

As part of a broader law, California is considering warning labels on soda cans.

The Beverage Association of America said the CSPI is using scare tactics, insisting there is no evidence of carcinogens in soft drinks. Some doctors say there's really not much danger.

"You'd have to drink about 10,000 bottles of coke a day for a lifetime in order to get that amount to see any effect," says Vanderbilt University Professor of Biochemistry Dr. Fred Guengerich.

The FDA says it is assessing the potential risks and will then decide if regulation is needed.

[Festina Lente]

This is reason #431 to not drink or eat anything made by large food/beverage corporations.

[Antonio]

I had about a dozen sodas in my entire life, Pepsies when we got them in Russia in the late 80s. They tasted like sweet shampoo to me and I couldn`t understand what was so hot about this capitalist product. I preferred beer at that time.

Soda addiction is a mystery to me, gotta be the dumbest vice of them all.

[basplaer]

Are the Scots using this in their premium national beverages?

[SLV^GLD]

What beer is using caramel coloring? The coloring must be cheap because coloring beer correctly isn't any harder than brewing it. Coloring it correctly (with roasted malts) would make a far better beer on several levels than just using liquid crayons.
I'd imagine that if profit is your motive making a better product that appeals to a wider audience would be smarter than making a shittier product that appeals to a narrower band of pleb just because the shittier product is a bit cheaper. ???

[iOWNme]

Ahhh yes, its the caramel coloring.

Not the Aspartame, Neotame, or High Fructose corn syrup.

[Glass]

What beer is using caramel coloring? The coloring must be cheap because coloring beer correctly isn't any harder than brewing it. Coloring it correctly (with roasted malts) would make a far better beer on several levels than just using liquid crayons.
I'd imagine that if profit is your motive making a better product that appeals to a wider audience would be smarter than making a shittier product that appeals to a narrower band of pleb just because the shittier product is a bit cheaper. ???


You can achieve the appearance much faster by adding the colour than you can by brewing it in. so you can produce more beverage in the same amount of time. With beer they also add in industrial alcohol so they can reduce the fermentation time of the brewed product from several months to a few weeks. Beer was usually warehoused for several months after it was bottled to get the alcohol levels up, much like a home brew.

[SLV^GLD]

You can achieve the appearance much faster by adding the colour than you can by brewing it in. so you can produce more beverage in the same amount of time. With beer they also add in industrial alcohol so they can reduce the fermentation time of the brewed product from several months to a few weeks. Beer was usually warehoused for several months after it was bottled to get the alcohol levels up, much like a home brew.
Sources? BMC beer methods are well studied and do not match that description. Of course, they are not coloured, either. Sam Adams isn't operating in that manner. Neither is Yuengling or Blue Moon. Now, who is doing this you speak of?

[Glass]

You can achieve the appearance much faster by adding the colour than you can by brewing it in. so you can produce more beverage in the same amount of time. With beer they also add in industrial alcohol so they can reduce the fermentation time of the brewed product from several months to a few weeks. Beer was usually warehoused for several months after it was bottled to get the alcohol levels up, much like a home brew.
Sources? BMC beer methods are well studied and do not match that description. Of course, they are not coloured, either. Sam Adams isn't operating in that manner. Neither is Yuengling or Blue Moon. Now, who is doing this you speak of?


Australian breweries do this. Lion Nathan and Fosters to name 2. Before the Swan Brewery (Western Australias main brewery) was sold on I went on a couple of tours there perhaps 10 years apart and the process had changed a fair bit. They indicated that the warehousing stage of 3 months had been eliminated and beer generally left the brewery 1 week after packaging. Australian laws were changed in 2008 to allow brewers to add 4% industrial alcohol to beer and premixed spirit concoctions. A premix is one that has the the alcohol and a mixer like cola or dry ginger ale combined in the can.

This meant that brewers only needed to find 1% more alcohol and that premixes needed to find between 2% and 3% more alcohol. This does not apply to distillers such as Jack Daniels but it does apply to smaller local brands that are simply mixing industrial alcohol with colours, flavours and sodas to get the "flavour" right. Bascially they are not distillers.

[MAGNES]

Coca-Cola settles in benzene lawsuit

By Chris Mercer, 15-May-2007

Related topics: Public Concerns

Coca-Cola has reformulated two of its soft drinks in the US to halt a lawsuit alleging they may contain the cancer-causing chemical, benzene.

http://www.foodqualitynews.com/Public-Concerns/Coca-Cola-settles-in-benzene-lawsuit


Coca-Cola Agrees to Remove Benzene from Soda

Coca-Cola has agreed to remove ingredients found in some of its soft drinks which might combine to produce carcinogenic benzine.

http://lighterfootstep.com/2007/05/coca-cola-agrees-to-remove-benzene-from-soda/

Benzene — in soda? It’s true: many bottled soft drinks and related beverages contain benzene, a well-known carcinogen. Benzene is a major industrial contaminant: a powerful solvent sometimes used in the manufacture of plastics. You take in a fair amount every day through air pollution and in drinking water.

Coca-Cola and other bottlers aren’t putting it there on purpose, of course. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known for almost fifteen years that potassium benzoate and sodium benzoate — commonly used as preservatives in soda drinks — can react with the ascorbic acid, which is also added to ensure product freshness. The result is benzene.


Benzene can form in soft drinks containing vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, and either sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate. Scientists say factors such as heat or light exposure can trigger a reaction that forms benzene in the beverages.


Big Soda vs. Our Kids: Better Beware of Benzene in Soda Pop
by Ross E. Getman

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0312-24.htm

Internal soda-company documents provided by a whistleblower show that in late 1990 it was known that the benzene being discovered in some soft drinks was not due to contaminated carbon dioxide, as had been the case with Perrier. Rather, it was due to the breakdown of benzoate in the presence of ascorbic acid.

On Jan. 12, the Food and Drug Administration gave me two memos from 1990-91 about benzene in soft drinks. The representatives of the National Soft Drinks Association told the FDA at the time that they wanted to avoid any publicity on the issue.


again, google is full of this information
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=coke+benzene&aq=f&aqi=g1g-m2&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
For the record I tried boycotting them
but the searches are not as good.
Let them know anyways, we are watching them.

[BrewTech]

What beer is using caramel coloring? The coloring must be cheap because coloring beer correctly isn't any harder than brewing it. Coloring it correctly (with roasted malts) would make a far better beer on several levels than just using liquid crayons.
I'd imagine that if profit is your motive making a better product that appeals to a wider audience would be smarter than making a shittier product that appeals to a narrower band of pleb just because the shittier product is a bit cheaper. ???


You can achieve the appearance much faster by adding the colour than you can by brewing it in. so you can produce more beverage in the same amount of time. With beer they also add in industrial alcohol so they can reduce the fermentation time of the brewed product from several months to a few weeks. Beer was usually warehoused for several months after it was bottled to get the alcohol levels up, much like a home brew.


Everything said here is untrue... wrong on so many levels...

The grains are all mashed at the same time so the color is "brewed in" (whatever) immediately.

Beer doesn't take months to ferment under any conditions. If any beer is in fermentation for more than two weeks, you're doing it wrong.

Warehousing a beer doesn't appreciably increase ABV. If the beer was still actively fermenting in the bottle, it would explode.

There is no need to add industrial alcohols (deadly poison) to beer to speed anything up, which it wouldn't anyway. The beers you are talking about are brewed high-gravity with cheap fermentables such as HFCS to acheive very low FG, then watered up to achieve proper alcohol and gravity levels.

Don't know where you're getting your info, but you obviously don't know a lot about brewing.

[SLV^GLD]

Budweiser, using an original lager recipe, goes from grain to can in 28 days. That is phenomenal speed for a lager. They are not pulling any of the stunts listed by Glass. But then, it is not the type of beer that would be colored. I can tell you one thing, when I brew, color is the 1st thing to go in and it occurs pretty much instantaneously. The color is a result of the roasted malts used to achieve certain body, taste and gravity.

Last beer I brewed weighed in at 1.095 and hit terminal gravity of 1.020 within 7 days using a 2L yeast starter. Black as the devil's heart, too (SRM 63.5, basically off the charts). Now, conditioning is expected to be several more weeks but all the alcohol is already in there. I'm not sure if BrewTech was including my post in his quotes to include me in the argument but what I'm trying to say coincides with his assertions. Color is not difficult or expensive to style. Alcohol comes quick and is a function of being able to call it beer and not a fortified malt liquor. Aging is more of a function of cleaning up byproducts and settling unfermentables than it is about establishing alcohol content.

Maybe the Aussies just hate beer and want to kill it?

[basplaer]

Maybe the Aussies just hate beer and want to kill it?

:D Have you tried a Fosters? I don't know any craft or home brewers that offer a favorable opinion, so that line made me spit tea on my desk.

[BrewTech]

I'm not sure if BrewTech was including my post in his quotes to include me in the argument but what I'm trying to say coincides with his assertions.

I was responding only to Glass' post...

[keehah]

made by reacting sugars with ammonia

Excess Entropy is Evil!