This “Starbugs thing”…
Seriously. The only reason it’s even going around is because vegan publications circulated an action alert because if you’re trying to avoid an imal products, a soy drink suddenly having an animal product in it is noteworthy. The media picked it up like it’s actually news is because they feel sad and lonely after the “pink slime beef” story and here’s a story about something pink and bugs are slimy…
But seriously. If eating meat doesn’t gross you out, if drinking the secretions squeezed out of a cow’s gland… and I’m not even talking about the hormones and antibiotics and any processing, I mean if the thought of eating an animal or drinking the stuff comes out something that evolved from specialized sweat glands designed to keep eggs moist doesn’t gross you out on its face… then why do you care if the dye came from a dried and crushed beetle carapace?
And here’s the kicker: if you’re a typical U.S. food consumer, you have eaten products that use cochineal extract before. Until last year, it wasn’t even required to be listed separately from “natural color” on the label of anything, and since the labeling law changed… well, if you didn’t know what cochineal extract was before now, why would you look for it?
But the fact that we’re making dye out of bugs isn’t new, and it’s not news.
