Did you know that the dye used to color Ocean Spray is derived from bug shells? Ocean Spray contains cochineal extract, made from, natch, the shells of the cochineal insect.
Other products containing cochineal extract include: Dole Diced Peaches In Strawberry Gel Fruit Bowl, Sobe Lizard Fuel , Tropicana Orange Strawberry Juice with Calcium, and Robitussin Honey Calmers Natural Throat Drops.
Don’t worry, though, humans have been using the bug dye since Aztec and Mayan times, who used it for rugs and such. That’s right, from the people who brought you ritualistic virgin sacrifice, an exciting new taste sensation!
However, some say the cochineal’s natural dye is healthier than one made in a lab. Still, vegetarians or people with certain allergies will want to avoid products containing cochineal extract. — BEN POPKEN
(Thanks to NeroDiavolo!)
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OH NOES!
but i drink Ocean Spray juices all the time….EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!!
And seaweed is in your ice cream. Not exactly hidden information, but I guess many people never read books or even watch TV much. Or maybe I just watch the right shows.
Certain allergies? Like what?
I thank you for this post. I will thoroughly enjoy grossing out friends and family with this.
for your info it is the most common ingredient used for red dye, known as Carmine.
Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of cool? They are just re-using nature’s waste instead of creating something in the lab that will probably end up wasting tons of materials and energy in the process.
i just looked this up, and the Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice blends i.e. cran-apple, cran-tangerine, etc. don’t have the bug dye. just lots of yummy high fructose corn syrup! whew!
Any vegan should know this. If they don’t, let them know so they can purge themselves. Oh and Jell-O is made from all the unedible parts of jointed mammals.
In addition, anyone who keeps kosher should know where this is used, as it will spoil an otherwise OK food item for that purpose.
Hasn’t this been the case for a very long time? Like 20+ years?
Conserning Vegans, they stink and should get no consideration.
But for honest Americans, I think we should know what is in our food. Read Fastfood Nation for lots of gory details.
There’s eel blood in your ice cream. Or, more accurately, manufacturers are using genetically modified baker’s yeast to produce an ice structuring protein derived from the blood of an arctic fish. Think about that next time you’re shoveling reduced fat ice cream into your face — you’re eating cloned eel blood.
It’s the only non-synthetic red food dye, and I BELIEVE that more people have allergies to the synthetics (and have to seek out the bug dye) than to the bug dye. And the bug dye is hard to buy retail.
McDonald’s Shakes are thickened with seaweed. That skeeves a lot of people out.
Yes, and your vegan tasty broccoli is grown in cow dung; toothpaste is made from the skeletons of dead plankton.. Where exactly do all you guys think everything you eat comes from?
Honey comes from insects too, and I don’t see the “eeew, gross!” about that. Cochneal has been used FOREVER, as has carrageenan (ice cream seaweed) and gelatin. I won’t get in on the vegan and “purge/cleanse” BS, since that’s political – but hello, mcfly?
Thanks, Consumerist, for putting up a headline story that’s irrelevant by several millennia. That has to be some kind of blogosphere record.
You guys are rockin hard lately. Oh, and where’s that promised major expose? Sheesh.
@JustPeteHere: No, I agree. The idea of all the lab synthetic stuff I probably eat creeps me out a lot more.
If vegetarians/vegans/whatever flip out over this, I believe they have a mental illness. Find something else to do with your life, seriously.
Well… At least the shells get washed.
am i the only one who thinks the middle picture (presumably something or other in a vat of dye) looks like raw meat soaking in blood? it’s grossing me out more than the bugs.
Carmine nearly made me give up vegetarianism, but what really killed it was when I looked up whey and rennet on wikipedia. Meat I can live without, but cheese? Absolutely not.
And I second tcp100: what happened to the expose?
@The Nature Boy: You’ve never met a fruititarian, have you..
Don’t worry, people are always inventing new ways to draw attention to themselves and ways to inject pontificating diatribes into dinner conversation.
@joeblevins: What’s wrong with seaweed and eel gelatin and pig/cow gelatin and delicious delicious bug dye?
Ok, I suppose if you’re allergic, or if you’ve decided to neglect the giant protein-digesting sack in your gullet in favor of refusing to eat fuzzy creatures that will end up in everyone else’s belly.
Some red dye comes from grape/cherry/berry skins, as well. So, there are Vegan options.
Don’t forget, the Aztecs also gave us chocolate.
@Pasketti: Cool, maybe the Consumerist can do a story on the fact that chocolate does, indeed, exist.
Meh, big deal. Better than chemicals, I say. I have no special sympathy for vegans/veggies on this issue. They wouldn’t have any for me if I followed some other kind of diet, and I’m mystified as to why they should claim a right to food parity when most people are omni. Moreover, the bugs outnumber us. They were here before we were, and they’ll be here long after. I don’t think we need to worry too much about their rights.
Eh, no surprise at all. Probably better we eat natural dyes than synthetic dyes any day. Besides there are still places where people eat raw insects regularly. If they can live with it, so can we.
Though, I have to admit, it’s rather surprising what’s in our processed (and sometimes unprocessed too) foods
I’m really astounded that carmine is economically viable. Roaches, for example, may seem to be everywhere, but can you imagine the work and equipment that would be required to breed, contain, and harvest 100 pounds of roaches? Cochineal are much tinier, and it’s even more incredible to ponder how they manage to scale that up to mass production.
If someone is so vegan they wouldn’t even consider drinking bug-made dye, I personally believe they should be forced to work the counter at a McDonald’s for three consecutive years.
@timmus: True, but from what I understand, cochneal dye is especially potent, and can be diluted quite a bit and still give a very rich color.
[foodfacts.com]
Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice
INGREDIENTS: Water Filtered, Grapefruit Red, Corn Syrup High Fructose, Grapefruit Juice Pulp, Citric Acid, Pectin, Natural Flavor(s), Ascorbic Acid [ Vitamin C], COCHINEAL EXTRACT and, Carmine Color
Cochineal Extract
“Cochineal extract is a coloring extracted from the eggs of the cochineal beetle, which lives on cactus plants in Peru, the Canary Islands, and elsewhere. Carmine is a more purified coloring made from cochineal. In both cases, the actual substance that provides the color is carminic acid. These colorings, which are extremely stable, are used in some red, pink, or purple candy, yogurt, Campari, ice cream, beverages, and many other foods, as well as drugs and cosmetics. These colorings have caused allergic reactions that range from hives to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. It is not known how many people suffer from this allergy. The Food and Drug Administration should ban cochineal extract and carmine or, at the very least, require that they be identified clearly on food labels so that people could avoid them. Natural or synthetic substitutes are available. A label statement should also disclose that, Carmine is extracted from dried insects so that vegetarians and others who want to avoid animal products could do so.
Ref: Center for science in the public intrest
Extract
The distilled or evaporated oils of foods or plants (such as nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, bark, buds, roots, leaves, meat, poultry, seafood, fish, dairy foods, or eggs) that are dissolved in an alcohol base or allowed to dry to be used as a flavoring. Food extracts as they are often labeled, are used to add a concentrated flavor to many food dishes, especially baked goods and desserts, without adding additional volume. Available in solid (cubes, granules or powdered), liquid or jelled form, extracts may be labeled as pure, natural or artificial. Pure and natural extracts are governed by laws in many countries that require compliance with procedures that take the extract ingredients directly from the named flavor, such as extracting oils directly from the vanilla bean to make pure or natural vanilla extract. Artificial extracts are flavors that do not necessarily use any ingredients directly from a source named for the extract but instead used combinations of ingredients to arrive at a flavor representative of the named food extract, such as artificial lemon extract. Some of the most widely used extracts include vanilla, almond, anise, maple, peppermint, and numerous solid or jelled extracts such as beef and chicken bouillon or meat demi-glaces. As an example of how the pure and natural extract is made, vanilla extract is created by soaking vanilla beans in water and an alcohol-based solution where it ages for several months, during which time the vanilla flavor is extracted from the bean. Anise extract, a sweet licorice tasting flavoring, is produced by dissolving the oil of anise seeds into alcohol.
Grape extract is produced to assist with the wine making process. Compounds from the skin of grapes are extracted and added to the wine in order to impart tannin, color, and body into a wine. The characteristics of the wine can be changed dramatically by the amount of time the wine is in contact with the skins. If the grapes are in contact for too long, the resulting wine may be too potent, or what is sometimes called “over-extracted”.
Juices of fruits and vegetables are often extracted as juice extracts to be used similar to other food extracts, as a flavoring when preparing foods. A common utensil for the purpose of extracting lemon juice is available to assist with home recipes requiring a lemon flavoring.”
- As stated in food facts.com
yummy
If you really want to be shocked go onto the fast food websites and look up the nutrition information for their foods and check out the ACTUAL amount of fat, sugar and sodium that is in a standard combo meal at one of these places! One night when I had WAY TOO MUCH time on my hands I wrote down the number of grams of each that was in one of my favorite combo meals and went to a measuring conversion conversion site (grams to teaspoons). When you get that moment of clarity that the last meal you ordered had 13 teaspoons of fat, 15 teaspoons of sugar and a couple of teaspoons of salt in it (picture yourself in your kitchen trying to just flat out EAT that amount of oil, salt and sugar!) it isn’t hard to figure out why we have such an obestiy problem here in the US.
@SaveMeJeebus: what self-respecting vegan would drink processed juice? i know if i see ingredients that aren’t from the fruits i’m supposed to be drinking, i won’t touch it.
i think it’s the omnis who pay far too little attention to the ingredients in their food, which is backwards.
I find it funny that people will get skeeved over this and still eat stuff like steamed clams. You may as well eat your household water filter.
I’ve got nothing against steamed clams. I’d just never put one to my mouth. I find everything about them yucky.
Gives new meaning to “bug juice” when camping.
@SkyeBlue: Ah.. The old “that’s why we’re all fat” oversimplification. Take a look at the amount of butter and milkfat in a French diet sometime, and tell me that there’s not a whole lot more to the so called “obesity epidemic” than McDonalds.
Personally, I eat at McDonalds about once a year, and really don’t know many other people who frequent the golden arches enough to really make it affect their health.
@SaveMeJeebus: That’s not true anymore. Most gelatin sold nowadays is lab-derived, not animal-derived.
it also seems to have the possibility to cause allergic reaction ranging from hives to death. Now, an allergic reaction is quite common with some foods, but how often do you expect the food dye’s ingredients to cause such complications? Some are urging the FDA to ban the use of this extract.
“You’re drinking cranberry juice? Whattya, having your period?”
As a vegetarian, I choose not to eat products using carmine or cochineal extract. It’s made from dead animals.
Why there is so much vitriol here for vegetarians and vegans, I have no idea.
how many insect parts end up in picked vegetables? a lot?
how many living organism are consumed every time you drink a glass of water? billions.
also, you probably eat a couple of bugs every year that crawl into your mouth when you sleep.
PURGE!PURGE!PURGe!!!!
@Crazytree: And how many bugs do you kill driving your car to work? Or just walking down the sidewalk? I realize you’re not eating those (‘cept for the ones that get stuck in your teeth), but death is death, right?
Everybody has to draw their own lines for what they do and don’t eat, but it’s a pretty slippery slope from bugs to fungus and yeast, to plants, to bacteria. Then what will you eat?
@Crazytree: It’s about what one chooses and what one feels is appropriate in this day and age for a human to eat.
I understand that a certain amount of insects get killed in harvesting produce. That’s quite different from this case where billions and billions of beetles are intentionally raised and killed for the coloring they can provide extra coloring to cranberry juice. I don’t want any part of that.
Bugs can crawl into my mouth while I’m sleeping all they want (despite that being gross). It’s what I consciously choose to do to other life forms that matters to me.
@valkin: “Bugs can crawl into my mouth while I’m sleeping all they want”
Kinky.
Thank gods I always put a lot of vodka in my cranberry juice. You know, to kill the bug ickies.
@kerry: “Then what will you eat?”
Animals… tasty, delicious animals.
I am not even going to get into some debate about vegetarianism (even though I am a vegetarian). I think that EVERYONE should have the right to know what is in the food and make informed choices about whether or not they want to eat them, veg*n or not. That is what I interpret to be the purpose of this blog.
That said, I think about a year ago there was a push to make Ocean Spray (and certain yogurt brands) label this correctly.
[www.fda.gov]
Did you know honey also comes from bugs? EVERYBODY PANIC
@nerodiavolo: the worms crawl in the worms crawl out!
(btw, the “reply to this” doesn’t appear on firefox on a mac?)
While I’m not wildly religious, I do like to keep Kosher to a degree. When I first heard about the bug juice last year, I was totally shocked. Bugs are VERY un-Kosher. Never before would I have thought to check my store bought food for bugs. I mean, come on! Isn’t that why we buy these things from the store and don’t grow them ourselves????
Anyway, since then I try to look for Kosher symbols on the stuff I buy. If it’s not marked, then I’m assuming there are bugs (or something worse) inside!
Great site by the way! First time posting…