COKE AND PEPSI ALTER ADDITIVE TO AVOID CANCER WARNING

COKE & PEPSI CHANGE MANUFACTURING
PROCESS TO AVOID CANCER WARNING

www.bbc.co.uk - Coca-Cola and Pepsi are changing how they make an ingredient in their drinks to avoid being legally obliged to put a cancer warning label on the bottle. The new recipe for caramel colouring in the drinks has less 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) - a chemical which California has added to its list of carcinogens. The change to the recipe has already been introduced in California but will be rolled out across the US. Coca-Cola says there is no health risk to justify the change.  Spokeswoman Diana Garza-Ciarlante told the Associated Press news agency they wanted to ensure their products “would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning”. The chemical has been linked to cancer in mice and rats, but there is no evidence that it poses a health risk to humans, said the American Beverage Association. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo account for nearly 90% of the US fizzy drink market, according to Beverage Digest.

Earlier this week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a U.S. watchdog group, said it found unsafe levels of the chemical in cans of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Dr Pepper and Whole Foods Markets Inc’s 365 Cola. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said at the time it was reviewing the group’s petition but stressed that the drinks were still safe. An FDA spokesman said a person would have to drink “well over a thousand cans of soda a day to reach the doses administered in the studies that have shown links to cancer in rodents”. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims a person would need to drink more than 1,000 cans of Coke or Pepsi a day to take in the same dose of the chemical that was given to the animals in the lab test. The companies say changing their recipes across the whole of the US, not just in California, makes the drinks more efficient to manufacture.

Coca-Cola Co and PepsiCo Inc are making changes to the production of an ingredient in their namesake colas to avoid the need to label the packages with a cancer warning. The change is meant to reduce the amount of a chemical called 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MI in order to meet the requirements of a California ballot initiative aiming to limit people’s exposure to toxic chemicals linked to cancer in animals. If we don't control our senses and avoid unnecessary things we will remain stick to the materialistic way of life.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

Our senses are uncontrolled. This morning, while I was walking on the beach, we found so many things, the capsule of the Coca-cola, cigarette butts and so many other things. So what is the necessity of this Coca-cola? You don’t find all these things in our society. We don’t drink Coca-cola. We don’t drink Pepsi-cola. We don’t smoke. So many things which are selling in the market in huge quantity by advertisement, by victimizing the poor customer... But they are called unnecessary things. There is no need of such things.  But adanta-gobhij, because the senses cannot be controlled, they are making business. They are making business, unnecessary thing. So we have to control the senses. If we really want spiritual life, if we really want to be free from these material clutches, then we have to learn how to control the senses. That is wanted. That is the purpose of human life.

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
Lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.5.30
Mauritius, October 2, 1975
"Complete Works of Srila Prabhupada"
Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International