Caramel Coloring, E150D, or Coca Cola Brown: Not So Carcinogenic as Some People Would Have It
You probably have read it in the NEWS: "Caramel Coloring in Cola carcinogenic!" Well, after yesterday's post on aspartame , I thought it might be advisable to have a closer look at this one, as well. After all, it suddenly appeared more likely that the sulfite ammonia caramel in your diet coke would kill you than the overly dreaded artificial sweetener aspartame. Although almost none of the webpages, which covered the carcinogenicity of caramel coloring cites the original source of this information, it is yet not difficult to find the respective study ( Moon. 2001 ) on PubMed. It was published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry and contains the following small table with data about the amount of 4(5)-Methylimidazole (a byproduct of the production process) in five commercially available cola softdrinks: cola soft-drink amount (μg/mL) in one bottle (μg/591 mL) brand 1 0.36±0.02 212.76 brand 2 0....