(KCEN) -- Thanks to one young athlete, Gatorade is now tweaking its formula to remove a controversial ingredient in some of its flavors.
Sarah Kavanagh is a volleyball player and self-described Gatorade lover.
But after reading the ingredients on the bottle one day, she dumped out the rest of it and started an online petition asking for the company to drop one of the additives.
It's called BVO, brominated vegetable oil.
It keeps the ingredients from separating.
But food safety activists banned it in Japan and Europe because it's been patented by chemical companies as a flame retardant.
Kavanagh said, "The Gatorade company in the UK doesn't use it. They don't think it's necessary. So, obviously, we can make the same product without this ingredient."
Kavanagh's petition had reached 200,000 signatures by the time Gatorade made its announcement on Friday.
