Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for October 14, 2018

Linalool and skin cells too … it’s all about labeling and how sausage is made … ask the makers of LaCroix, coconut oil, and lawyers ….

As a comedian once put it:

“The government doesn’t make sure you don’t get bad stuff in your food, they make sure you don’t get TOO MUCH bad stuff in your food.

They have a list; you can have point oh-oh two grams of rat b*lls in your salami…"

But they taste so good! And they’re a nice pretty red!

http://www.vegparadise.com/news13.html

https://www.iacmcolor.org/safety-of-color/natural-colors/carmines/

Cochineal is obtained from the dried bodies of the gravid female insect Coccus cacti; it has been used as a food and textile dye since ancient times.

Carmine and cochineal can be used for coloring meat products, seafood, confectionery, alcoholic beverages and soft drinks, cider, vinegar, yogurt, baked goods, jams, jellies, dairy products, snack food, convenient food, fruit preparation, seasonings, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.

Far better for me to eat them, than for them to eat me.

Cochineal may be made from bugs, but other synthetic red dyes such as Red No. 2 and Red No. 40, which carry far greater health risks, are derived from either coal or petroleum byproducts.

Don’t forget castoreum, usually listed as “natural flavoring.” Ewg!

Ripleys is also doing red dye.

Red dyes are often various diazo dyes, e.g., Solvent Red 19, Solvent Red 24, and Solvent Red 26. Anthraquinone dyes are used for green and blue shades, e.g., Solvent Green 33, Solvent Blue 35 and Solvent Blue 26.The pure dyes found in modern liquid petroleum dyes are essentially longer alkyl side chain forms of traditional dyes and normally multiple chain length variations of the chromophore are found within a typical commercial liquid petroleum dye. For instance, Sudan Red 462 is essentially Solvent Red 19, with the ethyl side chain replaced by either a 2-ethylhexyl or a tridecyl side chain. The longer branched side chains improve solubility dramatically, but in some cases the high solubility prevents the dye being isolated as a crystal, except at very low temperatures. The high solubility liquid dyes originated with Morton International and BASF (ACNA Italy) as the primary inventors. For instance, Morton International created Solvent Blue 98 as a high solubility form of Solvent Blue 35. BASF created Solvent Blue 79 as its high solubility form of Solvent Blue 35. In some cases it is possible, with normal solvents—e.g., xylene—to prepare stable (to -20C) solutions at 65% “solids” content. The original powder dye form of the chromophore would not be soluble beyond 2% in xylene.

Quit buggin’ me, Ms T.! Yer givin’ me parathesia for reals. Yolks!

Red velvet cake mix with six-legged roadkill

Clueless crushed beetles (Is She from Pottsville?)

All natural carcasses (Next Week: “Juicing!”)

These are a few of Her favorite things

(with apologies to Maria von Trapp, Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Austrian Nazi Party)

Competed food groups make us live longer and stuff. The BFG* provides the stuff.

*Bug Food Group

Six-legged roadkill mostly happens on windshields, doesn’t it?

For being uniformly hued in primary or secondary colors, these beasties have a cynical and cruelly sophisticated way of catching us up on the sometimes surprising arcana of modern food processing.

I wanted more felicity, but I guess I’m tired.

*Eating locusts: The crunchy, kosher snack taking Israel by swarm*

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21847517

Thanks for the windshield’s eye view of American cuisine, Teresa.

All that red and yellow bug stuff is too ikky for me. I’ll stick with my soilent green.

That last “ingredient” on the label, ‘and other natural flavors’ has always been suspect in my book.

Do the Beetles know they are used as a food additive? Is that the meaning of their song “ I am the Cochineal?” Or maybe “Do You Want to Know a Secret” was the tip off. George is probably quite tasty, but honestly, I think I would pass on Ringo.

Yeah. Yeah. So we eat bugs in our food. So? Do you prefer coal tar by-products?

Tonight, in your honor, I will garnish my Adult Beverage with a maraschino cherry….