I will eat pretty much anything. I confessed to this long ago in Goes Down Easy at a Bargain Price, as well as several other entries. My husband, my children, my friends, and many robotic creations and humanoid clones are more discerning about what they ingest than I am. And yet this news story disturbed even me, Taco Bell Twinkie Woman.
They’re putting bugs in our food. They waited until we were jiggy with animal waste and excretions in our vaccines, perfumes, and medical tests, then they started smuggling critter juice into our grapefruit juice. Who are THEY? People who aren’t us and get paid well for it. The creative terms they’ve come up with for a dye derived from boiled, dried, crushed female cochineal insects include ‘natural colouring’, ‘color added’, ‘carmine dye’, ‘natural red 4’, and the ephemeral ‘E-120’.
In defense of consumers, we’re not idiots, so we do know that Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow lipstick was not born that color naturally. But there’s quite a leap from an ingredient list that includes E-120 to one that admits to pulverized beetles, and I haven’t seen that second label, have you? The news reports say we won’t see anything close to it for at least two years in FDA time.
Consumer groups, particularly those in support of hyperactive children, have been lobbying the Food and Drug Administration for over a decade to have labels clearly marked to indicate when insect-derived matter is present, or even better, to have it banned completely. It adds no nutritional value. It’s just pretty. But it’s a large world, and we don’t need a consensus on how red our fruit drink has to be to appeal to the masses. Especially when bug-based dyes pose a health threat to a growing segment of the population. In particular our children, who depend on us to choose their food.
People read labels now more than ever, and that goes for all people, not just those who are vegan, kosher or have known food allergies. It’s a different world today than it was when the ancient Mayans began using the cochineal beetle to dye their textiles. In the 15th century, cities conquered by Montezuma paid yearly tributes in the form of colored cotton blankets and bags of dye. But they knew better than to eat it. Had we been a beetle on the wall back in ancient times, we might have overheard the following.
UAXACTUN: (feeling blanket) Sweet piece of goods, Kalakmul. What else can you show me?
KALAKMUL: How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?
UAXACTUN: (licking lips) Beautiful color. What’s in it?
KALAKMUL: Same shit as the blanket.
UAXACTUN: Forget it, we’ll be extinct soon enough. Where’s the nearest Poland Spring?
From our recent road trip to Virginia, Daughter’s Featured Fotos capture Rest Stop Views
crossroads
north is 2 directions?
ewwww
“you’re not from around here, right?” said the truck driver after I took this picture