Starting August 2024, the FDA will finally ban brominated vegetable oil in foods, giving beverage companies a year to reformulate. Enjoy your BVO-laced Sun Drop while you can!

The move to ban BVO, a substance linked to a laundry list of health horrors and exiled from the 'Generally Regarded as Safe' list since 1970, marks the U.S. playing catch-up with the rest of the sensible world. Companies now have a year to swap out this erstwhile citrus-content stabilizer, lest Californians have the last laugh when their local ban kicks in by 2027. With even Cola giants having long ago deep-sixed their BVO formulas, it seems Sun Drop and its ilk are the last of the bromine Mohicans.

Brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, has been a contentious ingredient for decades, raising eyebrows among health experts and regulators alike. The FDA's decision to ban its use in food items effective August 2, 2024, is not just a sudden crackdown but the culmination of years of growing concern. The substance was removed from the Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) list in 1970, yet it has somehow managed to persist in certain beverages to this day. Many nations, including the UK, India, the EU, and Japan, had already banned BVO in food products between 1970 and 2010, making the FDA's recent move look like a long-awaited but inevitably awkward dance step at the global regulatory party.

For those who aren't familiar with BVO, it's used primarily as a stabilizer in fruit-flavored beverages to prevent the citrus flavoring from floating to the top. But unlike the floating citrus flavor, health risks associated with BVO sink deep into alarming territory. Exposure to BVO has been linked to a range of adverse health effects, from skin, nose, mouth, and stomach irritation to more severe neurologic symptoms and thyroid damage. It's the chemical equivalent of inviting a bull into a china shop and wondering why things keep breaking.

The FDA's ruling gives beverage companies a one-year window to reformulate their products, relabel them, and deplete existing inventory — a process that might make one nostalgic for the Y2K preparation panic. Some brands have already been ahead of the game. PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, for instance, removed BVO from their Gatorade and Fanta products respectively, long before the FDA's decision. So if your favorite citrus soda starts tasting slightly different next summer, you can thank the confluence of consumer health advocates and dogged scientists.

Speaking of science, it was a study conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health that ultimately sounded the death knell for BVO in American foods. The study raised significant safety concerns, which, combined with mounting public pressure and advocacy from organizations like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, led to the FDA's conclusive ban. The Center has been particularly vocal, declaring this ban as 'long overdue and necessary.' It's hard to argue against the overdue sentiment when you're lagging behind India, which banned BVO during the time 'Home Alone' was a box office hit.

Sun Drop finds itself as a curious relic in this scenario, one of the few national beverage brands still using BVO. Whether it's a testament to its traditional flavors or merely a stubborn attachment to outdated stabilizers, fans of Sun Drop will need to brace themselves for an impending change or stockpile their cabinets like it's the storming of the Bastille. And for the rest of us, it means farewell to an era where seemingly innocuous citrus sodas came with a side of somewhat sinister additives.

Interestingly, California will implement its own ban on food products containing BVO, among other additives, starting in 2027. The state's proactive measures further underscore the shifting landscape of food safety regulations. So, while the rest of the country will have to comply with the nationwide ban that takes effect in 2024, Californians will also have additional measures in place by 2027. It's a bit like watching someone else get their dessert first and realizing you're stuck with a suspiciously yellow Jell-O.

This regulatory shift is undoubtedly a headache for those in the beverage industry, who now face the monumental task of adjusting their formulations and ensuring compliance. But it's also a victory for consumers and health advocates, who have long questioned why a substance with known health risks was allowed to linger in food products. As the world begins to congratulate itself for finally making this change, the soda aisles will quietly undergo a transformation. And maybe, just maybe, we'll wonder how we ever let BVO spike our drinks in the first place.

So, enjoy your BVO-laced Sun Drop while you can, before it transitions into the annals of food ingredient history alongside trans fats and the very short-lived era of deep-fried butter. Remember, every time you sip, you're chugging down a small piece of regulatory history in the making. Cheers to that!