Gum Arabic in Mountain Dew

edited August 2011 in Life
They sure do put some weird shit into food and drink don't they? I was just taking a refreshing swig from my ice-cold can of Mountain Dew when I caught a glimpse of the ingredients on the side of the can. You've got the usual shit that you'd expect to find in there, such as sugars and flavoring but there's one thing which sticks out to me... Gum Arabic? WTF is that? Well, a quick search on Wikipedia shows that;
Gum arabic, also known as gum acacia, chaar gund, char goond or meska, is a natural gum made of hardened sap taken from two species of the acacia tree; Acacia senegal and Acacia seyal. The gum is harvested commercially from wild trees throughout the Sahel from Senegal and Sudan to Somalia, although it has been historically cultivated in Arabia and West Asia. Gum arabic is a complex mixture of polysaccharides and glycoproteins that is used primarily in the food industry as a stabilizer. It is edible and has E number E414. Gum arabic is a key ingredient in traditional lithography and is used in printing, paint production, glue, cosmetics and various industrial applications, including viscosity control in inks and in textile industries, although less expensive materials compete with it for many of these roles. While gum arabic is now produced throughout the African Sahel, it is also still harvested and used in the Middle East. For example, Palestinians use the natural gum to make a chilled, sweetened, and flavored gelato-like dessert.

That's pretty cool, it's used in everything ranging from foods to paint. It also reduces the surface tension of liquids, which leads to increased fizzing in carbonated beverages. This can be exploited in what is known as a Diet Coke and Mentos eruption. That's pretty awesome too :D

But as I was saying, it's pretty interesting to see what they put into food and drink these days.

Comments

  • edited July 2011
    Most of those "gum" products are obtained from tree saps and things like that.

    I wish that major food companies used a greater number of natural, non-carcinogenic ingredients in their products.
  • edited July 2011
    If you are drinking mountain dew, you need to watch out for more than gum arabic.

    They put large amounts of BVO, Brominated vegetable oil in mountain dew and a lot of other citrus type sodas.
    In one case, a man who drank eight liters of Ruby-Red Squirt daily had a reaction that caused his skin color to turn red and produced lesions diagnosed as bromoderma. The excessive quantities together with the fact that the man had a higher than normal sensitivity to bromine made this an unusual case.[2] A similar case reported that a man who consumed two to four liters of a cola containing BVO on a daily basis experienced memory loss, tremors, fatigue, loss of muscle coordination, headache, ptosis of the right eyelid as well as elevated serum chloride.[3] In the two months it took to correctly diagnose the problem the patient also lost the ability to walk. Eventually bromism was diagnosed and hemodialysis was prescribed which resulted in a reversal of the disorder.[4]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brominated_vegetable_oil

    Here's another interesting read about it:
    http://fooddemocracy.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/bvo-brominated-vegetable-oil-toxic-additive-in-many-sports-drinks-and-sodas/

    Some nasty shit. you really have to be careful what you eat/drink these days there seems to be at least a small amount of poison in everything.
  • edited July 2011
    It's an example of our lack of consumer protection and regulation.

    It's usually cheaper to add a chemical to impart a particular flavor, texture or scent to a product than it is to add the non-artificial ingredient that features those characteristics naturally. Since we lack the regulations to say that companies aren't allowed to use poisonous chemicals to do that, the companies add poisonous chemicals to our foods.

    I was reading about how in Europe for example, most of the foods that would contain poison if you bought them in the U.S., do not. Their sodas are safer, their burgers are healthier, etc. They have laws against putting things in food that are demonstrably harmful to humans. All due to regulation that forces the companies to use actual food when they make a food product.

    EDIT: It's one of the reasons I always lol when I hear people whining about government regulation, and how it has no place in society. The entire point of most of it is to protect people from the effects of big businesses cutting corners to increase profits.
  • LethargicaLethargica Regular
    edited July 2011
    Did you know that Tourine, and ingredient used in many energy drinks, was first discovered in bull piss??
  • edited July 2011
    Lethargica wrote: »
    Did you know that Tourine, and ingredient used in many energy drinks, was first discovered in bull piss??

    Actually
    Taurine is named after the Latin taurus (a cognate of the Greek ταύρος) which means bull or ox, as it was first isolated from ox bile in 1827 by German scientists Friedrich Tiedemann and Leopold Gmelin.[1]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine

    Pretty interesting stuff actually, apparently it makes up 0.1% of out total body weight.
  • ChupaloChupalo Regular
    edited July 2011
    Sierra Mist Natural is a somewhat-less-dangerous soda. You really just want to avoid caramel color (toxic), sodium/potassium benzoate (toxic), and high fructose corn syrup (modified sugar without any of the benefits of real sugar).
  • edited July 2011
    Chupalo wrote: »
    Sierra Mist Natural is a somewhat-less-dangerous soda. You really just want to avoid caramel color (toxic), sodium/potassium benzoate (toxic), and high fructose corn syrup (modified sugar without any of the benefits of real sugar).

    It just so happens that my favorite soda (Coke) is loaded with that caramel-coloring. I really wish that they'd offer a coloring-free, glass bottle coke (With real sugar, rather than HFCS). Like the ones I buy now, but without the color.
  • McSkluvinMcSkluvin Regular
    edited July 2011
    That reminds me about something I heard about energy drinks. Even though they supposedly list the caffeine content, they don't list the caffeine that's contained in guarana and the other herbs they put into it, so you are actually getting a shitload more caffeine than they tell you.
  • edited July 2011
    Isn't Guarana it's own chemical?

    EDIT: Nevermind, I just derped. It's a plant, but you can estimate the caffeine content based on the Guarana content, and by which part of the plant it was obtained.
  • edited July 2011
    Check the label on 'Tahiti Treat' sometime, it contains brominated vegetable oil, stuff is tasty, loved it when I was a kid, can't find it in Canada anymore though.
  • DarkhunterDarkhunter Regular
    edited August 2011
    Mountain Dew sucks from not only the reason's listed but also the Processed Sugar.
  • edited August 2011
    Zok Jr wrote: »
    If you are drinking mountain dew, you need to watch out for more than gum arabic.

    They put large amounts of BVO, Brominated vegetable oil in mountain dew and a lot of other citrus type sodas.


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brominated_vegetable_oil

    Here's another interesting read about it:
    http://fooddemocracy.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/bvo-brominated-vegetable-oil-toxic-additive-in-many-sports-drinks-and-sodas/

    Some nasty shit. you really have to be careful what you eat/drink these days there seems to be at least a small amount of poison in everything.


    Who the fuck drinks LITERS of MTN DEW per day?
  • edited August 2011
    Who the fuck drinks LITERS of MTN DEW per day?

    They exist.
  • mafiabromafiabro Regular
    edited August 2011
    I couldn't drink that much mountain dew. I drink a ton of monster/nos/redbull ect though but i was already well aware that taurine originated from bull piss, but it doesn't really matter to me.
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