On a lighter note than the possibility of unknowingly ingesting what's essentially thalidomide, I'd like to talk about colors in our food and drinks. The subject first appeared on my radar years ago, when I picked up a bottle of red grapefruit juice on a day when I just really wanted grapefruit juice.
There on the label was something called cochineal extract. Hmmm, I thought. Extract? Sounds, I don't know, like it comes from fruit. Or some kind of berry, or maybe a pod. And I didn't give it a second thought because, heck, extracts are so, well, natural.
Indeed, cochineal extract is indeed natural. And it's approved by the FDA for use in food, drinks and cosmetics, Problem is, it doesn't come from fruit, or berries, or pods. It comes from insects. Specifically, it comes from the female cochineal insect, which lives on prickly pear cactus plants native to Central and South America.
And how do they get the red, pink and fuchsia from the little critters? They, uh, crush them. In huge numbers; after all, it takes lots of little insects to color our yogurt, candy, baked goods, alcoholic drinks, fake crab, even our lipstick and shampoo. If you're picturing huge cochineal-raising operations, with acres and acres of opuntia, the cactus in question--well, you're right.
The problems with cochineal extract, also called carmine, fall into two general categories. The first, which I'll refer to by its technical name, is the ick factor. It isn't potentially harmful, but still, you're eating or drinking or applying to your lips . . . bug juice. Yum! And for those of you who are either vegetarian or vegan, you may want to watch labels more closely. Same goes for Jews, Muslims, Jains, and so on.
The second, much worse, problem is that ingesting said bug juice (and even working in the industry which produces or uses it) can cause and has caused everything from cracked lips to severe, life-threatening anaphylactic shock, the kind that sends you to the emergency room with the possibility that you may not leave it alive.
Still, there's good news on the horizon. The substance (i.e., bug juice) will be subject to new labeling requirements in the United States starting in early January. See, all this time, the industry has been able to list it on labels as "color added." And we can safely assume that when the same industry is forced to list the bug juice as carmine or cochineal, instead of color added or natural red no. 4, some manufacturers may prefer to find alternate sources of reds and pinks.
However, the bad news is that the particular pink shade of carmine used in candies, dairy products, and baked goods is hard to match without using, you know, bug juice, so chances are good it'll still be in many products. After all, the new rules don't say they can't use the stuff, just that they now have to label it as (sort of) what it is. And, of course, the global food industry assumes consumers are--to put it gently--severely stupid cows (sorry, cows!) who don't bother to read labels anyway as they shove the stuff down their gullets (apologies for the mixed metaphors).
Because the stuff is indeed natural, the industry complains that we're up in arms over a natural product. And yes, the squeezins' from cactus-dwelling insects are natural, even though they might provoke life-threatening allergic reactions. And, you know, the ick factor.
So to the food and drink industry that uses the magic word, natural, to try to gain our trust, and to convince us that we all have our knickers in a twist because the product they use to color our world is natural, I have only three words:
So is arsenic.
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