...hey barista!...hold the bugs....

This is not a joke: there are ground up red beetles being used right now as a food coloring ingredient in yogurt, ice cream, special coffees, juice drinks and many other grocery products. The ingredient is called "carmine."

Carmine is literally made from dried, ground-up red beetles, and its coloring (bright red) is used in yogurt, juice drinks, candies, and a long list of other products, including many "natural" products.

It's not that these red beetles are dangerous. Except for a few individuals who suffer severe allergic reactions to the beetles, most people do just fine eating carmine. Beetles are probably good for you, just like ants. High in protein, low in fat... you get the picture.

But shouldn't someone have told you?

There's a grossness factor that probably explains why products using this ingredient list "carmine" instead of "powdered red beetles" on the label. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has even petitioned the FDA to ban carmine, or, at the very least, require its clear labeling.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will have you seeing red this year, but this time it's a good thing.

Since Jan. 5, the FDA has required food manufactures to disclose whether red cochineal beetles are among their products' ingredients. These beetles are farmed, harvested, dried and crushed to produce a red dye called carmine that, until this year, had been disguised in the ingredient list as "artificial color," "color added" or the all-encompassing "natural and artificial coloring."

Because of lax labeling laws, the extent of carmine in foods and drinks is not known.

Most carmine used in the United States is imported from Peru and the Canary Islands. The insects are carefully brushed from the cacti... and placed into bags. The bags are taken to the production plant and there, the insects are then killed by immersion in hot water or by exposure to sunlight, steam or the heat of an oven. It is to be noted that the variance in appearance of commercial cochineal is caused by the different methods used during this process. It takes about 70,000 insects to make one pound of cochineal.

The part of the insect that contains the most carmine is the abdomen that houses the fertilized eggs of the cochineal. Once dried, a process begins whereby the abdomens and fertilized eggs are separated from the rest of the anatomical parts. These are then ground into a powder and cooked at temperatures in excess of 212 degrees to extract the maximum amount of color. This cooked solution is filtered and through special processes that cause all carmine particles to precipitate to the bottom of the cooking container. The liquid is removed and the bottom of the container is left with pure carmine."

Yum….yum …. Yum! Not exactly what you had in mind when you were eating yogurt, was it? The most appetizing part of this description has to be, "...the abdomens and fertilized eggs are separated from the rest of the anatomical parts..."