The Independent AND Staff REPORTER
TWENTY-SEVEN years after the ill-fated launch of New Coke, the threat of having a cancer warning placed on their famous red bottles is forcing Coca-Cola to revise the closely guarded ingredients again.
Along with its arch-rival Pepsi, Coca-Cola is altering its drink in the US after the state of California declared one of its flavourings a carcinogen – though it will continue to sell the old form of the drink in Britain and the rest of Europe, with no cautionary labelling. Two drinks have been made to include less of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, a caramel flavouring known as 4-MEI.
And Coca-Cola South Africa said yesterday it also planned to ask the manufacturers of its caramel colourant to modify their production process, in line with its US counterpart. The changes will not alter its recipe, taste or colour, said the company. The change in the US was made after the researchers linked 4-MEI to cancer in mice and leukaemia in rats.
It can be formed during the process of cooking certain ingredients and may be found in small amounts in many foods. Under Californian law, drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens must have a cancer-warning label on their packaging.
But the two companies – which, combined, make up 90 percent of the soft-drink market in the US – insist the ingredient is not a health risk.
Coca-Cola said yesterday the warning was “scientifically unfounded”, and that it had made the changes through a “manufacturing-process modification”.