Carmine Food Coloring Is From Bugs ... Do You Want To Eat Bugs?...

I originally published my 'rant' on Carmine food coloring made from bug bits back in 2010 in my consumer blog. I think this information is important, especially for parents of children, that it deserves to be published again, here in my main blog.
Thanks,
Carol

This is my ‘Rant’ on bug bits and bug parts used as food coloring in our food chain, and the same bug parts used for coloring cosmetics. Often this food/cosmetic coloring made from bugs is to blame for 'hidden' allergies that affect both adults and children. It is often difficult to diagnose this allergy because most people are not aware that Carmine coloring comes from crushed beetles.

Sometimes these allergies manifest in adults that have become sensitized as they age. But children are more often the ‘victims’ of this insidious red/pink/purple food color when it is in foods such as Minute Maid Fruit Punch and brightly colored yogurts and candies.

This insidious food color is often called 'NATURAL' because it comes from bugs; bugs are 'NATURAL' but why would anyone in the civilized world want to consume BUGS?

Carmine, not my uncle Carmine but instead the red/pink or purple coloring that is used to color some foods and commercially available, drugstore variety cosmetics, especially lipstick and blush, is obtained from the Cochineal or the Polish Cochineal Beetle, which is a scaled insect that is raised on beetle farms specifically for the purpose of harvesting the red/pink or purple color from the beetles hard shell, body casing. I guess you know by this second paragraph that this post is about both the BAD and the UGLY in our consumer world!

Some cosmetic brands that use Carmine coloring in their products are Revlon Cosmetics, Maybelline Cosmetics, L’Oreal Cosmetics and many other cosmetics that are commonly found in drug stores or regular grocery stores.

There are cosmetics available that do NOT use Carmine as a red/pink/purple coloring agent. Stores like Whole Foods and some shops that sell vitamin preparations often carry such cosmetics that don’t contain Carmine. And the prices of the cosmetics without Carmine are about the same as the price of the cosmetics that do contain Carmine.

There are also many shops on the Internet that sell Carmine FREE lipstick and blush colored with either mineral or vegetable coloring.
Check labels on all cosmetics for the coloring agent used.

Because I don’t like the idea of beetle body parts providing the red/pink/purple coloring in my lipstick, I buy and use a lipstick made by a manufacturer called Gabriel that makes some red and pink colors that I use that are NOT colored with Carmine. Here again you have to read the ingredients to make sure that the lipstick you choose does not contain Carmine.

I obtain my Gabriel brand lipstick through the Internet at a shop called White Rabbit that is located in Half Moon Bay, California. Most Gabriel colors do not contain Carmine and they do NOT contain petroleum either. Petroleum dries out the skin and lips so it is best to NOT have petroleum in any cosmetics.

Petroleum products at first seem to moisturize the skin and lips but as time goes on the constant use of petroleum products produces a drying effect. Chapstick brand lip balm in the tube is a good example of a petroleum based lip balm that has a drying effect on the lips. The reason petroleum is used so often in lip balms sold in regular drug and grocery stores is because the profit margin to the manufacturer, and the resale profit margin to the store, is greater cheaper ingredients are used to make products, and using petroleum in cosmetics is much cheaper that using oils like jojoba or safflower in a lipstick.

Another place where Carmine is used is in the food industry, especially in yogurts and fruit juices, and it can be found in some ice cream.

I love Activia Yogurt but I will buy only the vanilla or the peach flavor because these are the two flavors where they do NOT use Carmine to color the yogurt.

Minute Maid brand fruit juice uses Carmine to color their fruit punch flavor, fruit drink a bright red color. Many mothers serve this brand of fruit punch to their children because they trust the Minute Maid brand name, and they may NOT be aware that it is Carmine that is used to make this juice a bright red color.

I have read that Carmine food coloring can cause some people to go into anaphylactic shock. Anaphylactic shock can kill a person.

If a woman is wearing a lipstick colored with Carmine, and she kisses a child on the face that is allergic to Carmine it can cause a reaction on the child’s skin. If the same woman kisses a man on the lips, who is allergic to Carmine, the allergic reaction can be much worse that an allergic reaction on the surface of the skin.

Most allergic reactions have been reported to Carmine when it is used as a coloring in food products.

The beetle that is crushed to obtain the red/pink or purple color from its outer shell is a living creature, and because these bugs are living creatures they are composed of their own form of protein in the form of amino acids that are particular to their species of beetle.

All living creatures are composed of amino acids arranged into whole proteins. We know that allergic reactions are to proteins. Some of the beetles protein must remain in the Carmine food color in order to produce the allergic reactions that have been reported.
Such allergic reactions can be especially tragic in children because often parents are not aware that it is the natural food coloring called Carmine that is causing their child’s asthma or other allergies.

Fruit drinks colored with vegetable food colors like the red color that comes from red beets are a better deal for young children to drink.

Please, don't confuse beets with beetles; beets are a vegetable, while beetles are bugs.

Check labels on both yogurt and fruit juices for the word ‘Carmine’ and if you see this word, you will know that ground, dried, beetle bits were boiled to extract the carminic acid from the bug bits, and then a product like alum or cream of tartar, stannous chloride or potassium hydrogen oxalate was used to precipitate the settling of the bug bits to the bottom of the container that is being used for this process. The settled red bug bits are dried, and in this form they are added to products to obtain red, pink or purple beetle juice color.

Say, wasn’t that the title of a movie about dead people about twenty years ago, Beetle Juice, Beetle Juice…I don’t dare say it three times…

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra

The following is an abstract taken from a larger article written for PubMed, which is a U.S. government publication.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13679965

[Asthma and allergy due to carmine dye].[Article in Spanish]
Tabar AI, Acero S, Arregui C, Urdánoz M, Quirce S.
Source
Servicio de Alergología, Hospital Virgen del Camino, Pamplona.

Abstract
Cochineal carmine, or simply carmine (E120), is a red colouring that is obtained from the dried bodies of the female insect Dactylopius coccus Costa (the cochineal insect). We have evaluated the prevalence of sensitization and asthma caused by carmine in a factory using natural colouring, following the diagnosis of two workers with occupational asthma. The accumulated incidence of sensitization and occupational asthma due to carmine in this factory are 48.1% and 18.5% respectively, figures that make the introduction of preventive measures obligatory. Occupational asthma caused by inhaling carmine should be considered as a further example of the capacity of certain protein particles of arthropods (in this case cochineal insects) to act as aeroallergens. Carmine should be added to the list of agents capable of producing occupational asthma, whose mechanism, according to our studies, would be immunological mediated by IgE antibodies in the face of diverse allergens of high molecular weight, which can vary from patient to patient. Nonetheless, given the existence of different components in carmine, it cannot be ruled out that substances of low molecular weight, such as carminic acid, might act as haptenes. Besides, since we are dealing with a colouring that is widely used as a food additive, as a pharmaceutical excipient and in the composition of numerous cosmetics, it is not surprising that allergic reactions can appear both through ingestion and through direct cutaneous contact. We find ourselves facing a new example of an allergen that can act through both inhalation and digestion, giving rise to an allergolical syndrome that can show itself clinically with expressions of both respiratory allergy and alimentary allergy.
PMID:
13679965
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Free full text

An alimentary allergy refers to a disease of the digestive tract.


On April 20, 2012 in the San Jose Mercury News it was reported that Starbucks will stop using red food dye made from crushed bugs (Carmine-cochineal beetle extract) in their strawberry flavored mixed drinks, and foods like the raspberry swirl cake, and their red velvet whoopie pie. Isn't it nice that you will no longer be consuming beetle juice in your Starbucks drinks and cakes! In place of the bug juice Starbucks will use red coloring made from lycopene, which is a red food color made from tomatoes. Hoo-rayyyyy for Starbucks!