Thursday, May 27, 2010

Gatorade

Years ago I e-mailed Gatorade about possible milk proteins in Gatorade products. Both a Product manager as well as their in house Nutritionist e-mailed me to confirm that their was no milk proteins in any form in their products.

Now they have a new product G Series Pro 3 recover Gatorade that has milk protein.

Gatorade, is owned by Pepsi see
Pepsi Allergy Information (USA).

I e-mailed both Gatorade US, as well as Gatorade Canada.

Received this standard answer from Gatorade Canada:

Hi Karen: Thank you for giving us the chance to address your concerns. We'd like you to know that Milk is one of the top nine allergens. If a Gatorade product has any of the top nine allergens it will be listed in the ingredients an also have an allergy warning. Both the Canadian regs and our own internal policies require that we declare an allergen if it is in the products. Doesn't matter what that product is. If there is no declarable allergen then we don't have anything in the ingredient line. We hope this information on our allergy policy is helpful, Karen.
Sincerely,
Michael
PepsiCo Canada
Consumer Relations
http://www.gatorade.ca/

Obviously this Consumer Relations person is not aware that Canadian Regs do not say that milk has to be listed as an ingredient, currently.

From Gatorade USA

Karen:

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your concerns about Gatorade Recover. Please accept our apologies for the delay in our response. We're very aware of the seriousness of food allergies, including milk, and we take every possible precaution to keep our consumers safe.

The source of protein in G Series Gatorade Recover 03 is whey protein. While much of the production line is the same as that used for Gatorade Thirst Quencher, the portion of the line that produces Recover 03 is separate from the rest of the production equipment.

Our first priority is the quality and integrity of our products, so we maintain an allergen management program in order to avoid any crossover of the G Series Gatorade Recover 03 milk ingredient. Following a changeover to run a different product, we have tested the shared portion of the line to ensure that any trace of milk protein has been cleared from the system.

I hope this information is helpful, Karen. We want to provide the most accurate information to our consumers so they can make informed choices.

Dan
Gatorade Consumer Relations

I first heard about Gaterade adding milk from Kids With Food Allergies the topic came up on their forums, however I am not a paid member. I only get their free newsletters, so I did not read the details of the post.

1 comment:

Nutrimom - Food Allergy Liason said...

And wasn't there a previous concern that some Gatorade flavors contain/may contain peanut oil?