<$BlogRSDURL$>

Monday, June 26, 2006

You're eating insects and probably don't know it

Scan the package ingredient list next time you buy candy, ice cream or beverages with a reddish hue. The color may have come from ground-up insects.

That's right. Instead of artificial red dyes, some food manufacturers list "natural" colorings called "carmine" or "cochineal."

The pigments are derived from female cochineal insects, which are raised on farms in Peru, Mexico and the Canary Islands. It takes 70,000 of them to make one pound of carmine, according to the Wall Street Journal. The abdomens and eggs of the females contain the most intense color; those parts are dried, ground and heated to produce the dye.

Carmine is in the box of pink and white Good & Plenty candy I have sitting on my desk. It's in the Dannon Fruit on the Bottom boysenberry yogurt I had for lunch last week. It's in the Tropicana Orange Strawberry Banana juice I recently served to overnight guests.

Not all manufacturers that use carmine or cochineal are upfront about it on the package ingredient list. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows some food tints to be obfuscated under terms like "color added" or "artificial color." So the snack you are eating may have bug bellies in it. You just don't know it.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the health-advocacy group that railed against movie-theater butter and beef fat in fast-food fries, in 1998 petitioned the FDA to force food manufacturers to clearly disclose the presence of carmine and cochineal in foods.

It wasn't until this year that the FDA proposed a rule requiring just that.

In the proposed rule, the agency declared its intent to require all food products that contain the rosy bugs to "specifically declare the presence of the color additive by its respective common or unusual name, cochineal extract or carmine, in the ingredient statement of the food label."

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=4306588

Comments:
Is this a kashrus concern? If it is, why do these products get kosher certification? If it is not a kashrus concern for whatever reason, then I am not bothered by it, because it is probably healthier than artificial color made from chemical dyes.

 

YUM!!!
and its very high in protein

 

It is a kashrus problem and the good hashgochos will not give a hechsher if carmine is in the product.

 

Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Google
Chaptzem! Blog

-