Ever wonder how many bugs you’re actually consuming daily? You haven’t? Oh. Well, we’re gonna tell you anyway.
Deciphering food labels is tricky business. They’re filled with lots of multi-syllabic words that border on being impossible to pronounce, chemicals that sound like they could kill you just by touching them and … much, much worse. Read on, unless you’ve eaten recently.
Most everyone is familiar with shellac as a wood-finishing product. It’s often used to give furniture, guitars and even AK-47’s that special shine. But did you know it is also commonly used as a food additive? Yep, that’s why those jelly beans you gorge on every Easter are so shiny.
But what exactly is shellac?
Are you sure you want to know?
Shellac is derived from the excretions of the Kerria lacca insect, most commonly found in the forests of Thailand.
The Kerria lacca uses the sticky excretion as a means to stick to the trees on which it lives. Candy makers use it to make those treats you love so much shiny and beautiful. Then you eat them. The insects that is.
You see, the process used to harvest the Kerria lacca excretion is a pretty simple one. They just scrape that shit right off the tree. Unfortunately for you and your future enjoyment of shiny candies, this leaves little room for quality control measures to guarantee that the insects themselves aren’t scooped up also.
Once that happens, and it almost always does, the insect simply becomes part of the shellac-making process. And the candy-making process. And the candy-eating process.
Before some health nut out there pipes up to tell us they don’t eat candy, we’d like to point out that, during the cleaning process, apples lose their natural shine. Care to guess how it’s restored?
21. st 2008 at 14:26
wow, that was really horrifying. An insect in candy. I’m not ware of this. But anyway thanks for sharing.