FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2010 file photo, bottles of Powerade sports drink and other Coca-Cola products are chilled over ice in Orlando, Fla. A controversial ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, is being... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2010 file photo, bottles of Powerade sports drink and other Coca-Cola products are chilled over ice in Orlando, Fla. A controversial ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, is being... (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — Coca-Cola is dropping a controversial ingredient from its Powerade sports drink, after a similar move by PepsiCo's Gatorade last year. 
 
 The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, had been the target of a petition by a Mississippi teenager, who questioned why it was being used in a drink marketed toward health-conscious athletes. The petition on Change.org noted that the ingredient is linked to a flame retardant and is not approved for use in Japan or the European Union. 
 
 In response to customer feedback, PepsiCo said last year it would drop the ingredient from Gatorade. At the time, Coca-Cola declined to say whether it would remove the ingredient from the two flavors of Powerade that contain it as well. 
 
 But this week, bottles of Powerade in fruit punch and strawberry lemonade flavors being sold in the Detroit, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska, New York and Washington, D.C. areas no longer list the ingredient. Some bottles still list it, however, suggesting Coca-Cola Co. may have started phasing it out recently. 
 
 A representative for the Atlanta-based company confirmed Sunday that its Powerade brands are "BVO-free." But no details were immediately available on when the change would be complete or how the drinks were reformulated. 
 
 Powerade's website still lists brominated vegetable oil as an ingredient for its fruit punch and strawberry lemonade flavors. 
 
 The Food and Drug Administration says brominated vegetable oil is used as a stabilizer for flavoring oils in fruit-flavored drinks. Coca-Cola has said in the past that it uses it to "improve stability and prevent certain ingredients from separating." 
 
 The decision by Coca-Cola to remove brominated vegetable oil from Powerade is just the latest evidence that food makers are coming under pressure for the ingredients they use. While companies stand by the safety of their products, some are making changes in response to the movement toward foods that people believe are natural. 
 
 Earlier this year, for instance, Subway said it would remove an ingredient dubbed the "yoga mat chemical" from its breads. The ingredient, azodicarbonamide, is approved for use by the FDA and can be found in a wide variety of breads. The petitioner, Vani Hari of FoodBabe.com, said she targeted Subway because of its image for serving healthy food. 
 
 Likewise, brominated vegetable oil can also be found in several other drinks. 
 
 But the Mississippi teenager, Sarah Kavanagh, said she targeted Gatorade and Powerade in petitions because they're designed for athletes, who are likely more concerned about what they're putting into their bodies. Her Powerade petition had more than 59,000 online supporters while the Gatorade one had more than 200,000. 
 
 As Americans cut back on soda, sports drinks have become more important for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo Inc., which is based in Purchase, New York. 
 
 Although Coca-Cola has long dominated rival PepsiCo on the soda front, it lags the company in the growing sports drink category. According to the industry tracker Beverage Digest, Gatorade has 64 percent of the sports drink market. 
 
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 Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi ||||| Thanks to the people who signed my petition on Change.org, I’m glad to know the Powerade sold at my school and consumed by people around the world will be a little bit healthier without BVO in it. I knew that if Gatorade could do the right thing, so could Powerade. 
 
 A couple months ago, I found out that one of my favorite drinks, Gatorade’s Orange, contained brominated vegetable oil (BVO). According to Scientific American and other news reports, BVO is patented as a flame retardant and has been banned in Europe and Japan. So I started a Change.org petition asking Gatorade to stop using it. More than 200,000 people signed my petition on Change.org and we won! But I learned that BVO is also in other drinks, like Powerade’s red fruit punch that is actually sold in my school! 
 
 It’s weird because Gatorade’s fruit punch doesn’t have BVO! But Powerade’s fruit punch does, and it is probably one of the most popular flavors for my friends. It is so wrong to be selling something like that to a bunch of kids anywhere! What are these companies thinking? I don’t want anyone in my family touching that stuff. Why do these companies put all this weird, crazy stuff in our food and drinks? 
 
 After Gatorade agreed to remove BVO from their drinks, a lot of people have been encouraging me to keep going, so now we’re back to officially ask Powerade to do the same thing! It’s common sense that sports drinks here shouldn’t contain crazy ingredients that are banned in entire countries because of health concerns. 
 
 I’ve read some crazy information about how BVO and the ingredient bromine can build up in people’s bodies over time and how the chemical is linked to problems with hormones and fertility and stuff like that. I also saw that Powerade may be the official drink of the NCAA for college athletes! Athletes shouldn’t be drinking that! NASCAR also has a deal with Powerade, but I don’t know why unless it’s to put out those engine fires! 
 
 Gatorade did an amazing thing and agreed to stop using BVO, and I hope the entire beverage industry is paying attention. Consumers don’t want BVO and every day that they keep it in there makes us trust them less. 
 
 For now though, Powerade pretends to be a healthy sports drink and it has to decide if it wants to be the only one (there will be no BVO in Gatorade or Vitamin Water) that still uses a chemical banned in Europe and Japan and that its main competitor, Gatorade, agreed to remove. 
 
 I know Powerade will listen. If they sell those things overseas without BVO, why risk my health and my friends’ health? 
 
 *Please sign and share to support me* ||||| SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
 PepsiCo Inc. is introducing a version of Gatorade that’s certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testing whether a product created in a lab with artificial flavors and colors can adapt to America’s growing natural-food movement. 
 
 After two years of research, the company is now selling strawberry, lemon and mixed berry G Organic in some Kroger Co. supermarkets, said Brett O’Brien, Gatorade’s senior vice president and general manager. It plans to expand the rollout to select grocery, natural and convenience stores over the next few weeks. The suggested retail price for the new drinks is $1.69 for a 16.9-ounce bottle, 50 cents more than for Gatorade Thirst Quencher, the nonorganic equivalent. 
 
 Organic Gatorade Source: Gatorade 
 
 Gatorade, which controls 70 percent of the sports-drink market, is facing increasing pressure from new challengers like coconut water as consumers are focused more than ever on ingredients. Organic food industry sales in the U.S. reached $43.3 billion in 2015, up 11 percent from the year before, while broader food sales gained 3 percent, according to the Organic Trade Association. 
 
 “We heard pretty loud through the locker rooms, through our work with nutritionists, that there is an interest and a desire among athletes to go organic,” O’Brien said in an interview. “Somewhere around 10 to 12 percent of athletes are saying they’re interested in purchasing organic products.” 
 
 To be considered organic, the new Gatorade had to shed artificial ingredients and PepsiCo needed to refine its manufacturing. Every step of the process was approved by the USDA, which aims to ensure organic products are more natural and less harmful to the environment. 
 
 But the introduction of G Organic isn’t without risk. PepsiCo recently faced a backlash after switching sweeteners in Diet Pepsi, forcing the company to reintroduce a version with aspartame less than a year after removing it. While the company isn’t changing ingredients in its flagship product as PepsiCo did with Diet Pepsi, a brand extension of Gatorade -- which already includes low-calorie G2 -- could confuse consumers. 
 
 “In as much as they can focus on the potential to change ingredients without changing the taste, that’s sort of a win-win,” said Adam Fleck, a beverage analyst at Morningstar Inc. “But you have to be very careful about alienating your current customers in a bid to attract lapsed customers or new customers.” 
 
 G Organic, which has seven ingredients, is the first major sports drink to cater to food and beverage customers looking for fewer and more natural components. 
 
 Other types of consumer products have already shifted in that direction: 
 
 Kraft Heinz Co. released an organic version of Capri Sun juice last year and took artificial colors and flavors out of its macaroni and cheese. 
 
 General Mills Inc. has removed artificial ingredients from some cereals. 
 
 Campbell Soup Co. has pledged to make all of its North American products without artificial colors or flavors by the end of fiscal 2018. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gatorade is contending with a growing list of all-natural competitors that are taking aim at the brand’s market dominance. 
 
 “While sports drinks are still the Michael Phelps of mass hydration, young upstarts like coconut water are taking advantage of health and wellness trends to make a run at the champion,” Duane Stanford, editor-in-chief of Beverage Digest, said in an e-mail. 
 
 For a story on Panera removing artificial ingredients from its kids menu, click here. 
 
 Gatorade was developed in a lab at the University of Florida in 1965 after an assistant coach there asked researchers to look into why his football players -- the Gators -- were suffering from heat-related illnesses like dehydration. 
 
 A single-ingredient product like coconut water benefits from a lack of such engineering. The most difficult part of creating G Organic was getting the amount of electrolytes and carbohydrates to the levels of other Gatorade products without boosting calories, O’Brien said. 
 
 Aspartame Fiasco 
 
 PepsiCo has previously dealt with pressure to change ingredients in Gatorade. It removed brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, from the sports drink after criticism on social media and online forums such as Change.org. Coca-Cola Co. made a similar move with Powerade. The company says removal of BVO wasn’t a result of pressure and had been in the pipeline for some time before the change. 
 
 Listening to consumer criticism doesn’t always pay off. Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo removed aspartame from Diet Pepsi in August 2015 only to reintroduce the original formula -- now called Diet Pepsi Classic Sweetener Blend -- in June. Diet Pepsi’s sales volume fell 5.8 percent in 2015 and dropped about 11 percent at retail during the first quarter of 2016, according to Beverage Digest. The problem: Customers didn’t like the taste of the sucralose-sweetened version. 
 
 G Organic will be sold at first only in single-serve bottles to give people a chance to taste the product, O’Brien said. It has 120 calories per single serving, about the same as in the flagship brand. 
 
 “There’s that misnomer that if it’s organic it can’t taste good, and that’s not the case,” he said. “We’re just trying to get people familiar with the product, what it means, what it does and try it. Once we’ve checked those boxes, we’ve got a big opportunity here.” 
 
 (A previous version of this story was corrected to show that G2 is a low-calorie drink.)
– Looks like a teenager's online petition has induced Coca-Cola to remove an ingredient from Powerade. The Mississippi teen, Sarah Kavanagh, led the charge with two Change.org petitions against brominated vegetable oil—one targeting Powerade, the other Gatorade—that gathered nearly 260,000 supporters in all, the AP reports. PepsiCo agreed to pull BVO from Gatorade last year, and now Powerade bottles in strawberry lemonade and fruit punch flavors in several cities don't have the ingredient listed. Some bottles still list it, and Coca-Cola said today that Powerade is "BVO-free," so it seems the company is phasing it out. Just what is BVO? According to the FDA, it's used in fruit-flavored drinks as a stabilizer for flavoring oils. But Bromine is a patented flame retardant that's banned in the European Union and Japan, and may be harmful to anyone who drinks it in large amounts, the Telegram reports. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo aren't the only companies under pressure from petitions: Subway yanked an FDA-approved ingredient known as the "yoga mat chemical" from its breads earlier this year when a petitioner at FoodBabe.com challenged the company's healthy-food image.