The science behind the Sunny D

TheScience behind

the Freya Sunny D Scandal

Dixon, SFC1warns us of the effects of drinking too much Sunny Delight by delving into the biochemical specifics of Carotenemia.

The Rise

I l l u s t r a t i o n b y K a r o l i n a S l i z After initial success across the pond, American-born orange juice drink Sunny Delight first hit the shelves of the UK in 1998 and in less than a year, was the 3rd most popular drink in the country. It was a marketing phenomenon, leaving

its competitors scratching their heads at the newcomer taking supermarkets by storm. Sunny Delight’s success was so massive that in 2000, it was set to overtake longtime front runner Coca Cola. The campaign aimed at young families couldn’t have been more high flying ... until it all came crashing down.

The Fall

The beginning of the end was 1999, a year after the UK launch. Sunny Delight’s unprecedented popularity sparked an investigation by The Food Commission (an independent British consumer organisation), revealing that the orange juice drink was only 5% fruit juice. The 95% other ‘ stuff’ was water, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable oil and most significant of all: beta-Carotene. That December, the BBC reported a 4-year-old girl in Wales who (in true Roald Dahl fashion) had turned bright orange after consuming the beverage. This already brand-damaging incident was accompanied by a badly timed TV advertisement featuring orange snowmen, prompting parents to believe that the drink was turning children orange on purpose. By 2001, sales had halved, and after multiple failed attempts to relaunch, Proctor and Gamble eventually gave up on Sunny Delight and sold the brand.

The Culprit: Beta-carotene

The product’s stark orange colour was provided for by the compound beta-carotene (molecular formula C40H56). Despite the painfully low fruit juice content of the drink itself, betacarotene is found in carrots (what a surprise!) as an orange pigment in the vacuole of the cells. Aside from being such an aptlynamed biological pigment, beta-carotene is one of the most common naturally occurring sources of vitamin A, a nutrient that will be familiar to GCSE biologists as essential for healthy eyesight. During digestion, the enzyme BCO1 (beta-carotene dioxygenase) breaks down beta-carotene and forms retinal (a form of vitamin A) in the small intestine. Evidently, the beta-carotene compound is nothing more than a plant-derived, naturally occurring source of vitamin A. So, the question remains: how could a humble plant pigment be the downfall of such a successful campaign? It turns out that in the case of Sunny Delight, it wasn’t so much what the victims were drinking, but how much. The drink was so popular amongst kids and believed to be healthy by parents, that the volumes of drink consumed were completely unregulated. So, what might happen if someone - say, a small child - were to ingest large amounts of beta-carotene? Of course, a fair amount of the compound would be converted by the BCO1 enzymes into the vitamin A that we need. However, after a certain threshold, there just aren’t enough enzymes in the small intestine to work on such an abnormally large number of beta-carotene molecules. It is at this point that an excess of beta-carotene builds up in the bloodstream and deposits in parts of the body with thicker skin like the palms, knees, and elbows. Thus, the child starts to exhibit a startling orange tinge, a condition called Carotenemia. The 1999 case was especially dramatic. The 4-year-old was reported to have been drinking Sunny Delight at an absurd rate of 1.5 litres a day, which combined with her small body and pale skin, made her skin discolouration particularly alarming.

Do it yourself

The average reader of the Chelt Scientist would need to eat 10-15 carrots a day (depending on how pale or dark your skin is) for weeks in order to raise the level of beta-carotene in the blood enough to see skin discolouration. I should warn those particularly adventurous readers that although Carotenemia is technically harmless, the orange hue is reported to take months of eating a balanced diet to fade (orange also probably doesn’t follow CLC uniform guidelines!)

Although this article focuses on the science of the scandal, Sunny Delight is often studied for the company ’s marketing tactics. So, if you ’re also interested in the business aspect of this article, I really recommend searching up "Sunny Delight Business Nightmares" on YouTube; there are some old news reports and documentaries that discuss the promotional campaign’s successes (and failures). Sunny Delight lives on today under the new name Sunny D and is still sold in the UK in case you want to try it!