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Comment by bananicorn | Hacker News Reader

Did you know Carmine is still in use as food coloring (E120)? The thought of having ground up bugs in my food is a little offputting, honestly...

And hey, at least you can't accuse them of clickbait-ism ;)

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I heard it's just used in some traditional kind of liquor to color it red.

I guess it would be too expensive to actually use for mass produced goods. Why collects and kill those bugs, when you can just use other red dyes?

It's used in the Italian liqueur Alchermes, which is commonly used in pastries, notably Zuppa Inglese.

I severely doubt they still grind up insects for this. Likely, they use a microbe that has been modified to produce E120 in huge quantities or otherwise synthesize it. Insects are expensive. A bunch of chemical producing bacteria are easy and cheap.

No mention of any such more industrialized process on Wikipedia [1], it's bugs all the way.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine

That's interesting indeed.

I guess that's kinda cool we haven't been able to synthesize this chemical yet for mass production

"Producing a kilogram of it requires 80-100'000 insects. Because of its high cost and the risk of allergic reactions, it's often replaced by synthetic dyes like E122, E124 or E132".

Note that both E122 and E124 are Azo dyes, which severely impact mental development. Those are two of the six dangerous food colorings that give all food colorings a bad name.

In fact, the ground up bugs (E120) are much healthier than the synthetic products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azo_dye

Hmm would I rather have Carmine or Castoreum today?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoreum

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