What is cochineal?!
Answers: My vegetrian cook book says veggies can't have it.
Its a dye and the name of the insect from which it's derived.
A deep crimson dye is extracted from the female cochineal insects. Cochineal is used to produce scarlet, orange and other red tints. The colouring comes from carminic acid. Cochineal extract's natural carminic-acid content is usually 19–22%.[5] The insects are killed by immersion in hot water (after which they are dried) or by exposure to sunlight, steam, or the heat of an oven. Each method produces a different colour which results in the varied appearance of commercial cochineal. The insects must be dried to about 30 percent of their original body weight before they can be stored without decaying.[10] It takes about 155,000 insects to make one kilogram of cochineal.
There are two principal forms of cochineal dye: cochineal extract is a colouring made from the raw dried and pulverised bodies of insects, and carmine is a more purified colouring made from the cochineal. To prepare carmine, the powdered insect bodies are boiled in ammonia or a sodium carbonate solution, the insoluble matter is removed by filtering, and alum is added to the clear salt solution of carminic acid to precipitate the red aluminium salt. Purity of colour is ensured by the absence of iron. Stannous chloride, citric acid, borax, or gelatin may be added to regulate the formation of the precipitate. For shades of purple, lime is added to the alum.[2]
As of 2005, Peru produced 200 tonnes of cochineal dye per year and the Canary Islands produced 20 tonnes per year.[10][5] Chile and Mexico have also recently begun to export cochineal.[1] France is believed to be the world's largest importer of cochineal; Japan and Italy also import the insect. Much of these imports are processed and reexported to other developed economies.[10] As of 2005, the market price of cochineal was between 50 and 80 USD per kilogram,[9] while synthetic raw food dyes are available at prices as low as 10–20 USD per kilogram.[11]
Crushed bugs.
"Cochineal is a traditional red dye of pre-Hispanic Mexico. This precious dyestuff was obtained not from a plant, but from an insect that lives its life sucking on a plant. The host plants are the flattened stems (pads or cladodes) of certain prickly pear cacti (platyopuntias, Opuntia), especially the species called nopales. The animal is a scale insect that manufactures a deep maroon pigment and stores this pigment in body fluids and tissues. Early Mixtec Indians required dyestuffs because the color of daily attire was carefully codified to signal social status. They required fast colors, i.e., those that would not fade, and Mixtecs heavily used indigo, derived from native legumes, for blues and cochineal for various shades of red."
A red dye made of the dried and pulverized bodies of female cochineal insects. It is used as a biological stain and as an indicator in acid-base titrations.
dye made of red bugses
shells?
It's a red dye made from crushed up beetles from South and Central America. The same is true of carmine. It can be found in fruit juices, shampoo, candy, gelatin (which a veg wouldn't be eating anyway), and a wide variety of cosmetics.
Oh, and it's a common misconception that Red #40 is made of beetles. Red #40 is actually vegan (although it's artificial, so it may or may not have associated health problems, depending on what research you believe)
It's bugs, but if you think there aren't bugs in your food anyway you're kidding yourself. It's much better for you than whatever nasty chemicals other dyes are made of. Dyes aren't really neccessary to food either though. I don't know why they use them at all myself.
The red color from crushed Beetles.