As the obesity epidemic keeps worrying scholars around the world, researchers keep an eye on the foods and drinks that have been proven to be a direct or indirect cause for the disease - but, in the process, there have been new discoveries that link sugar-high drinks to other types of diseases, like the possibility of caramel color's cancer properties.
It wouldn't be the first time that scientists say that an ingredient in soda cans could potentially cause a fatal disease, but it might be the first time that researchers find a direct link between caramel color and cancer - and the discovery could potentially stop a lot of harm coming the way of consumers.
Science Daily reports that the new findings of a link between caramel color and cancer came from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was first published in the most recent edition of the PLOS ONE journal, in a research paper entitled "Caramel Color in Soft Drinks and Exposure to 4-Methylimidazole: A Quantitative Risk Assessment."
According to Info Wars, for their research, the team of scientists sampled 110 brands of different soft drinks and found different levels of 4-Methylimidazole (4-MEI), the composite that gives many soda drinks, like Coke and Pepsi, their characteristic caramel brown color.
As it turns out, most of the drinks contained dangerous levels of 4-MEI, which could ultimately lead to a high caramel color cancer risk.
According to Yahoo! News, the caramel color cancer research also found that about 44 to 58 percent of people consume a can of soda per day, endangering them further with overconsumption of the carcinogen.
"Soft drink consumers are being exposed to an avoidable and unnecessary cancer risk from an ingredient that is being added to these beverages simply for aesthetic purposes," said PhD Keeve Nachman, the senior author of the study, about the caramel color cancer findings. "This unnecessary exposure poses a threat to public health and raises questions about the continued use of caramel coloring in soda."
