Eating bugs

[urbpan]

The first thing I ever wrote for The Urban Pantheist was an article about eating bugs. I researched the topic pretty thoroughly (and put the article out shortly before three different books on the subject came out--it would have been nice to have those resources), I even subscribed to the Food Insects newsletter, found out about a company that sells candy and snacks with insects in them (and arranged to have them carried in the store I worked in). For the next several years any time the subject came up in the media, one or more of my friends would direct my attention to it. After a follow-up article I promised not to write about it any more in the zine. I didn't promise not to blog about it though.

I bring it up because I just posted a comment in by_steph's journal on the subject, a comment that was long enough that it should be its own post. At issue is an article about the labelling of the ingredient "carmine" or "cochineal," a red dye derived from a Mexican scale insect (aphid relative) that lives on prickly pear.

Of course, first I have to complain that the insect is repeatedly referred to as a "beetle." Okay, no one knows what a scale insect is, so they have to use a word that the average WSJ reader will know. That doesn't excuse them from arbitrarily changing the phylogeny of the animal. The classification difference between beetles and scale insects is on the "order" level, the level where we are classified as primates and not rodents. A small point perhaps.

Second, at issue is food labeling: Should food manufacturers be allowed to list cochineal "artificial coloring," or do they need to be explicit about its insect origin? Shouldn't it be "natural coloring?" Anyway, the point is, should manufacturers be allowed to obfuscate the fact that they put insect-derived dye in yogurt and grapefruit juice?

The loudest voices in opposition are (of course) the vegetarians, the kosher folks, and the food allergy people. They all (rightly, I think) would like to know if a food ingredient is violating their ethics, their covenant with God, or is simply going to kill them. Of course, vegetarians could avoid buying food with "artificial flavoring," Kosher folks could avoid buying food that isn't labelled Kosher, and people with carmine allergies, well, I guess they could avoid eating processed food that is colored red.

I didn't really care too much about this article until I read the statement from the apologist for the food industry: "It's not part of the requirement for other animal-derived ingredients. Lard is 'lard.' It doesn't say 'pork' after it. 'Milk' doesn't say 'from cow.' 'Butter' doesn't say 'from cow.'"

What a disingenuous prick. He could have said, "this is an ingredient that has been used safely for decades. Sure, these days people don't like the idea of eating bugs, but hey, it's not gonna kill ya (unless you're allergic)--you eat lobster, right?" But no, he had go the smokescreen route. Dairy products aren't labelled "from cow" (although there's often a big picture of a cow on the package--I guess dairy producers aren't worried about the public perception of cow-derived ingredients) because people have been eating dairy products for 10,000 uninterrupted years. MODERN PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF EATING BUGS. They know this, but because they are greedy weasels, they don't address the real issue, they don't try to change public perception, they just whine "it will cost us money to change!" These are the same assholes (philosophically speaking) that opposed putting seatbelts in cars for more than 50 years because (they claimed) the cost of it would kill the car industry. Seems to be doing okay, though, doesn't it?

So anyway, the real issue is this: Should people be warned if foods contain an ingredient that isn't harmful, but if they knew about it would disgust them?

Comments

[momomom.livejournal.com]

E2 has an interesting history of the secretive history of cochineal. You probably already know this but I didn't. It apparently was thought to be a seed for a long time, at first accidently and then later maybe intentionally to keep the secret!

From:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=208497&lastnode_id=208497&op=logout
(there is more interesting stuff there)

"When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico in the 1500s, they were amazed by the brilliant red-dyed clothing worn the natives. Europe had red dyes - madder root, lichen, and the kermes insect - but nothing could compare with the brilliant scarlet of the Aztec cloth.

The secret was a tiny insect, the cochineal scale (Dactylopius coccus), that lived on the flattened stems (pads or cladodes) of certain prickly pear cactus (Nopalea cochenillifera and Opuntia). The Aztecs called the dye nocheztli, for they found it on the divine cactus, teo-nochtli.

The dye comes from the female cochineal scales, which are crushed to obtain the purplish pigment their bodies produce. This pigment, an astringent chemical called carminic acid, protects the insect from predation, and yields the brilliant and durable red dye carmine. Interestingly, while these females may live up to three years, the males of the species lack mouthparts and live only a week after hatching - their sole function is to reproduce.

At first the Spanish thought the dried, unprocessed insects were seeds, so they called them grana cochinilla. This accidental misnomer later served the Spanish well, helping them to maintain a monopoly on the dye for a time, which they guarded as a state secret. When explorers from other European nations came to the New World to learn the secret of the dye, they were looking for seeds (grana) instead of insects. The Spanish monopoly on cochineal production was not broken until 1777, when a French naturalist smuggled Mexican cactus pads with cochineal scales to Haiti. "