this is why...

I don't read Scientific American, I read American Scientist (which is written BY scientists and by and large, FOR scientists) instead:

Oh noes, bugs in our FOODZ, says American Scientist.

It's cochineal. One of the safest red dyes out there. It's been used for YEARS. And by the time they're done extracting it, there are no bug parts left - it's really little different from squeezing beet juice out of beets and using it to color things. There's really no beet in there.

I'd a million times rather eat dye that comes from a bug, that's been used safely for a very long time, than consume some dye that was concocted recently in a lab, which has been tested but not long-term tested. (I have similar concerns about artificial sweeteners)

(And yes, I realize that is somewhat unreasonable given my stance about other things. But I'm not saying aspartame should be BANNED, I'm just saying, label food with it and give me the CHOICE to buy something sugar-sweetened vs. something aspartame-sweetened)

The other thing that really, really gets to me? Scientific American referred to these things as "cochineal beetles." THEY ARE NOT BEETLES. They are scale insects. Different species, different order, different animal. (While this isn't as egregious as trying to reclassify fish as "sea kittens," it's still a taxonomic error and it BUGS me that a publication with "Scientific" in its name did that)

I am also irritated that Scientific American apparently used CSPI - also known as the Chicken Littles of the food world (except, they might say chicken is DANGEROUS!) as their source. Please. They are an advocacy group. They are not researchers. They are big into knee-jerk things, they are big into scare tactics. (Oddly enough, not that different from PETA). If we let them run the show, we'd be subsisting on organic kale and reverse-osmosis purified water. And you better not enjoy that kale too much!

I'm not even going to GET into the issue about "allowable bug parts" under the USDA, but suffice it to say, that box of Corn Flakes is likely NOT 100% pure corn flakes.

Scientific American, you lose.

I really hope this isn't a hallmark of a larger trend - some advocacy group comes out, screaming about something that really we don't need to be upset about (There have been three adverse reactions to cochineal dye in the past ten years - fewer than there have been to gluten, eggs, and many other "safe" food items.). Yet the CSPI apparently wants this stuff banned.

Look, if you're entomophobic - read the label. Don't buy anything colored with cochineal. But trust me - I've been eating stuff with cochineal dye in it since I was a little kid and it is totally safe (unless you are one of those 3 out of probably 100 million people who is allergic). I suspect cochineal is safer than Red 40 or Red 2.

I really hope this isn't the tone for the coming years. I hope the Administration and the Cabinet are smart enough and not easily influenced enough that they don't start doing idiotic, law-of-unexpected-consequences-generating things by banning stuff just because a bunch of hotheads get to screaming that it should be banned.

I can forsee a future where lots of things are banned because of their "potential danger" - not just cochineal but also guns, booze, cigarettes, animal fats, sugar, artificial sweeteners, vaccines, toys....the list goes on. Almost anything that is useful and or enjoyable to someone, there is probably an "advocate" out there with more emotion than brains who is spinning themselves up to start talking about how it should be banned.

(And as Bug Girl cites on her blog post - it's a source of a living wage to poor Central American farmers. So won't you think of the peasants?)

I realize I've ranted about a lot of things this week but there seems to be an unusually great amount of stupidity in the news these days.

COMMON SENSE, people, it's called COMMON SENSE. There seems to be a severe deficit of it these days.