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  • 2011-07-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Is Pepsi Contaminated with HIV? (en)
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  • A warning about HIV-contaminated Pepsi products began spreading on the Internet and via cell phone text message in July 2011 (with a resurgence in September 2012), and it has also been echoed in recurrent rumors about Mango Frooti, a popular beverage in India: Such rumors are standard food contamination urban legends akin to the leper in the Chesterfield factory rumor. No news accounts, government agencies, or other reliable sources have reported Pepsi or Frooti products being contaminated with HIV-infected blood. In May 2013, Parie Agro (Frooti's parent company) responded to this unjustified rumor by posting the following message on their Facebook page: As for whether consumers can acquire HIV via contaminated food or beverages, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) emphatically says they cannot: HIV does not long survive outside its host medium of human bodily fluids: blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, saliva, tears. (Which is not to say HIV can be transmitted by every one of those: according to the CDC, Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.) The CDC says except under laboratory conditions, HIV is unable to reproduce outside its living host; it does not spread or maintain infectiousness outside its host. Therefore, were HIV-tainted blood to be mixed into foodstuffs or beverages, the virus would neither survive nor while it was still viable multiply and so replenish itself. Although such cases are rare, the CDC confirms that people have acquired HIV through oral contact with, or swallowing of, HIV-laden bodily fluids. However, no known infections involving oral transmission of HIV have so far come from contact with, or ingestion of, a food product or beverage; all such infections involved sexual contact. Other ingestibles have previously been fingered as vehicles for the transmission of HIV-infected blood to the unsuspecting public, and these stories too were baseless: The 2004 scare about restaurant ketchup dispensers and the 2005-2006 scare about pineapples. (en)
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