Red Dye: Insects in Your Food?

It's been a requirement in Europe to list food additives on the packaging for over 10 years. The additives are classified & identified using so-called "E numbers". Cochineal is E120.

Nice. Either the US doesn't have information like that available or it isn't well known (equally likely as not having the information). I have a feeling that the food additives in some products would result in chaos if people were aware. Going through grocery stores becomes a hassle nowadays due to additives and battles between organic/non-organic/"natural".

Nice article. It was very interesting.

If your concerned about where the red comes from in lipstick you better research the base materials.

I thought everyone knew about the beetles that make up cochineal.

Pygmies dip their arrows in it to give a poison tip.... or is that Kuraci (spelling)

If you think that is bad, don't ever look into the making of sausage - or laws.

Sausages and laws ... you're from North Dakota, right? Lolll (geddit?)

And Heinlein ... The Master! I even remember that quote of yours.

DZ

Good God, I'd never have thought that they'd still be making cochineal. It was the sole source of purple dye until a dye was synthesized from coal in 1800s Germany.

It was so rare and precious that, in many places, only high-ranking people were allowed to wear clothes with purple on them. Roman Senators (or perhaps members of the patrician class) had the exclusive right to wear a purple stripe on their togae; Roman Emperors wear allowed to wear purple robes.

You'd've figured that someone would have come up with a better way to make red colouring like this. I mean, can you imagine the EXPENSE of picking 10,000-odd bugs to make a small batch? Then again, a little probably goes a long way.

DZ

You recall coal tar was the base ingredient of the majority of food colorings not long ago

Yes red dye No. 2 Amaranth, FD&C Red No. 2, E123

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye)

That was a reason why red M&M candies were no longer manufactured for the market.

Until......

That was later replaced with

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allura_Red_AC

An excerpt from it.

Despite the popular misconception, Allura Red AC is not derived from the cochineal ,Dactylopius coccusinsect. Red AC was originally manufactured from coal tar but is now mostly made from petroleum. However, the red coloring carmine is derived from the female cochineal ,Dactylopius coccus, a South and Central American insect.

Back to the M&M's candies, some people claim that the red M&M candies have a different taste......more...sharper/bitter.

On a side note..

I wish I was paying more attention in my High School biology, the instructor had passed around a small paper to each student. he asked volunteers for the students to put it on their tongue.

He mentioned it was a chemical in a food dye, of which some could taste and some could not..............

Picture that happening today.

phoenix911

Your correct for the most part but your comment.....

They can be found in canned tuna, fresh vegetables and fruits. Insect parts in our foods are permitted by the USDA as a parts per million (PPM).

that would be a pretty clean batch, I believe its not even that. Especialy processing fruits. The lower grades gets processed as juice.

And in bakeries...flour can get pretty nasty.

How you have to look at it is as protein.

Bon Appétit

The dye used as "Imperial" or Royal Purple was producted from shellfish. Tyrian Purple in Roman times, I believe.

slightly off topic. When you boil beets.......the water stains terribly and was wondering if that was used in dyes.

Eh? just fell off the turnip truck eh? Never heard of Anato either I suppose it is the origin of the color used in production of butter as we know it and comes from the butt of a Canary Island "knat" not weird or disgusting either

The average person ingests several thousand spiders while sleeping in the average life span along with mites, flies and quite a bit of plain old dirt.

Questions and answers and more Questions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annato

Don't ask where honey comes from.

If I am not mistaken,(very possible),indigo was used to make a deep blue or purple dye also. They used to have plantations in the south (us) way back when

You have bug parts in practically all of your packaged foods you buy from the store, so why be surprised that you have food dye made from bugs.

Are you tripping because it's a bug?

People eat bugs all the time, it's part of the food chain. It just that at some point people decided that eating bugs wasn't kosher and then later people referred to eating bugs as gross.

The stuff is cooked so it's safe.

I think people are generally either unaware or ignorant of the conditions of what their food is made of or what things get into their food during the cooking/packaging/preparation process. "Ignorance is Bliss" and "What they don't know won't hurt them" have become leading thoughts for both consumers and manufacturers.

I think that the blog entry was just presenting something that blogger found intriguing. Maybe he screams when he sees bugs, maybe he doesn't. Everyone has their fears/gross factors... if they didn't "Fear Factor" wouldn't nearly have so much appeal.

Like eating live African Cave Spiders.

People are unaware and ignorance IS bliss. Case in point: 'natural flavours' and 'Natural fragrance' are obtained from things like fruits by grinding them up, drying them, and dunking the pulp in an organic solvent, such as acetone or hexane. The solvents's then made to flow out of the recipient and it carries away the flavour/fragrance with it. The solvent's then boiled off, so that the oil-based 'natural flavour/fragrance' remains.

The process is safe, in that all of the solvent's boiled off and re-used for more dissolving. But don't go telling people how their 'natural' flavours, etc., are obtained.

As for bug parts: eating them is unavoidable, but quality controls ensure that the percentage of 'large' bug parts (so bigger than microscopic ones) is always below a certain limit. For example, wheat and barley stored in silos hetre in Canada is regularly sampled and tested by a federal-government agency to ensure that bug part don't exceed a certain limit. Same goes from fungi, etc., too, I suppose. And for 'macro' pests like mice ... well, they get filtered out later on.

DZ

I think people are generally either unaware or ignorant of the conditions of what their food is made of or what things get into their food during the cooking/packaging/preparation process. "Ignorance is Bliss" and "What they don't know won't hurt them" have become leading thoughts for both consumers and manufacturers.

You are correct on this, having worked in the food processing industry, lot has to do with presentation and tradition.

"Ignorance is Bliss" and "What they don't know won't hurt them" have become leading thoughts for both consumers and manufacturers.

That is not quite right. See post #27, with the link about Amaranth. But I do have to agree, when they is a question its a you can ask, but I don't have to tell you policy.

Take Cheddar Cheese. it normally is not yellow, its actual an off white. they use dye for it. Look red for what I saw when they added it. They never told me what when asked ....

phoenix911

Regarding post #27: The FDA can only protect people from just so many things. They can rule things generally safe for human consumption and allow it.

When I stated those "leading thoughts", I was thinking more like: Do the consumers know exactly what they are eating half the time? Yes they are eating doritos or crackers, but unless they know everything on the ingredient list, they are usually not well-informed. They know when things aren't good for them, but they don't know exactly what additives are in their food and accept that merely because it "tastes good".

I see, and your question......

Do the consumers know exactly what they are eating half the time?

Its best if they don't.

A few years back, was riding with some friends, drove past a catering business, and they had a big roater in the lot, she asked what that was, I told her a roaster.

" What?" she said, I said a roaster you barbeque pigs and sides of beef on it...the look of horror came over her face. another friend jabbed me and proclaimed she's a vegetarian.

great I said

I then I went off and explained the allowable and types of proteins found in vegetables and fruits, her girlfriends jab turned into a punch.

ok, ok......

I then exclaimed if you want to eat something pure, take a good deep breath of air, you can have seconds if you like......and added, but don't take too deep a breath, we're coming up to a paper mill....

Her girlfriend didn't know whether to laugh or strangle me. She did both, she laughed as she strangled me.

before she cut my air off, I did manage to say....see, whether you agree or not, deep down, we are all meat eaters.

phoenix911

This reminds me:

I once suggested, years ago, in a letter to a vegetarian magazine to take up eating Oxtail stew. You would not have to kill the beast but just give local anesthetic, remove the tail and Bobs your Uncle. The article was not published although no animal (with eyes) would have been killed in the process. Maybe they can't handle the looks of stumpy tailed cows? Gosh, I should have just shut up, or.......?, Ky.

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Believe it or not I'm actually aware of how sausage is made (some of my friends make it at home!) and how many insect parts the FDA allows in packaged foods.

The main thing that motivated me enough to write this article though was just that a natural dye made from bugs, of all things, still exists in foods you can buy in a supermarket. Maybe I'm just ignorant about dyes, but I was under the impression that almost all were synthetic these days.

Sorry about misconstruing what you meant and taking things in the wrong direction.

Amazing after thought of change how much remains the same...

Don't ask what the best bedding for mushrooms is, then, also.

But are you ok with shellfish? Because they are basically the insects of the ocean.

I think our aversion for insects as food as arbitrary at best. I really don't see the issue, other than for the insects themselves, as using them as a food coloring.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimps and prawns have long been part of human cuisine, and are now farmed on a large commercial scale.^[76] Insects and their grubs are at least as nutritious as meat, and are eaten both raw and cooked in many non-European cultures.^[77] Cooked tarantulas are considered a delicacy in Cambodia,^[78] and by the Piaroa Indians of southern Venezuela, after the highly irritant hairs – the spider's main defense system – are removed.^[79] However, the greatest contribution of arthropods to human food supply is by pollination: a 2008 study examined the 100 crops that FAO lists as grown for food, and estimated pollination's economic value as €153 billion, or 9.5% of the value of world agricultural production used for human food in 2005.^[80] Besides pollinating, bees produce honey, which is the basis of a rapidly-growing industry and international trade.^[81]

The red dye cochineal, produced from a Central American species of insect, was economically important to the Aztecs and Mayans,^[82] and while the region was under Spanish control, becoming Mexico's second most-lucrative export;^[83] and it is now regaining some of the ground it lost to synthetic competitors.^[84] The blood of horseshoe crabs contains a clotting agent Limulus Amebocyte Lysate which is now used to test that antibiotics and kidney machines are free of dangerous bacteria, and to detect spinal meningitis and some cancers.^[85] Forensic entomology uses evidence provided by arthropods to establish the time and sometimes the place of death of a human, and in somes cases the cause.^[86]

The relative simplicity of the arthropods' body plan, allowing them to move on a variety of surfaces both on land and in water, have made them useful as models for robotics. The redundancy provided by segments allows arthropods and biomimetic robots to move normally even with damaged or lost appendages.^[87][88]

Although arthropods are the most numerous phylum on Earth, and thousands of arthropod species are venomous, they inflict relatively few serious bites and stings on humans. Far more serious are the effects on humans of diseases carried by blood-sucking insects. Other blood-sucking insects infect livestock with diseases that kill many animals and greatly reduce the usefulness of others.^[89]

'Long as they keep putting the worms ... ... in the bottle ... ... I'll keep drinking it

They don't use real worms anymore. They are plastic; at least for the export market.

Dam' - this means a trip to the offie¹ for another bottle, to get the worm out & analyse it rather than eating it . And I have to drink the whole dam' bottle to get down to the worm! Saturday night now - I have work on Monday - you may have to wait a while for my results². Can't rush these things - may end up with "Oh, dam', I've ate³ the evidence".

¹ Off-licence: establishment licenced to sell beers, wines & spirits for consumption off the premises.

² My CR4 postings may be a bit "dot'n'carry"⁵ for a while.

3 dialect or British ˈ'et ⁴

⁴ http://dictionary.weather.net/dictionary/eat

⁵ http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english/poetry_literature/2262844-dot_and_carry_one.html

is that atificial worm edible....or is there a warning on the bottle?......like who is going to read the warning?

Oh, one swig left before I finish the bottle, I better read the ingredients.

"Dont eat what the dog wont eat" is an old saying that still has merit.Animals can sense bad food long before we can.Modern pesticides kill or repel all insects, and the fruits and veggies are "perfect", at least in appearance.There is something wrong with anything that a bug will not eat.I prefer an apple with an honest worm hole here and there.At least I know it should be edible.If I encounter the worm, I can live with that.Even a half worm is better than no worm.We should be watching the insects and taking our cues from them.Dont eat what the bugs wont eat.As far as a dye made from an insect, no problem here.It is more natural than anything synthetic.

"Dont eat what the dog wont eat"

careful about that, even though that may be true, but if a dog eats something it does not mean its good for human consumption.

a dogs gut can handle bugs that aren't insects alot better that a human

I did not say eat what the dog eats, I said do not eat what the dog Wont eat.A big difference.Although I have found that the Purina Diet worked well for me.I lost 50 pounds, but wound up in the hospital with tubes running from every orifice in my body.

EZStreet

Did the dog food make you that sick?

No.I was chasing a cat across the street and a car hit both of us.

EZStreet

Great blog topic. I was surprised by this too when I first learned about carmine. My wife was reading a book about the origins of colors when she found out about that color, which happens to be in cherry Coke.

The FDA does not care what you use as long as you keep samples and records. Like the saw dust the put in food and call it cellouse on the label.

Thats cellulose.

and that is hotdog casings