April 25th, 2012, 7:46 pm
Overall, I agree with Fermion on the ranking of food colourants, employer-based health insurance, and coffee vendors (although I do like Starbuck's pumpkin scones). Of course, who knows if cochineal is safe or not. Just because it's natural and was widely used doesn't mean it doesn't eventually kill 1-in-N people who consume it. Up until recently, even the most advanced economies didn't have the routine data tracking and scientific tools to detect chemicals that killed over time. Cochineal is made by the bug to deter predators so it undoubtedly has some unpleasant effect on what ever eats too many of these bugs. The double good news is that bugs make large quantities of it so it can't be extremely toxic and the high colour density of the substance means little is needed to make a strawberry frappucino. The bad news is that it's an anthraquinone-based chemical which makes it related to a pesticide listed on California Environmental Protection Agency's carcinogen list.
Last edited by
Traden4Alpha on April 24th, 2012, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.