Narrator: No one likes finding bugs in their food
when they're not expecting it.
But I hate to break it to you,
you're actually eating them all the time.
I'm not just talking about the critters
that end up in juices or jams by accident.
Some bugs are in our food because, well,
we put them there.
If you think it's fruit
that turns this strawberry yogurt red, think again.
Yes, there are in fact strawberries in there,
but they're there for flavor and texture, not color.
That bright red comes from something else called carmine.
Oh, and it's made from squashed bugs.
Squashed female cochineal bugs, to be specific.
They're tick-sized critters native to Mesoamerica
where they suck the juice from prickly pear cactuses.
Greig: And if you squish them, they are bright red inside
and kind of a purply, deep purple-red color,
and that's the source of cochineal,
cochineal dye, carmine, whatever you wanna call it.
Narrator: For thousands of years, people have been using
these bugs to dye everything from clothes to pottery.
But it wasn't until more recently
that they made their way into commercial foods.
From 1955 to 2010, the consumption of food coloring
rose by 500% in the United States.
That's mostly thanks to artificial colors
like Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1.
But in the late 20th century, consumers became
increasingly concerned about synthetic chemicals
in their foods and demanded more natural ingredients.
So many companies turned to carmine.
It's FDA improved and tasteless.
It resists degradation from light, heat, and oxidation,
and unlike some synthetic colorants,
it hasn't been linked to cancers or tumor growth.
Greig: Now, some people apparently have allergies to it,
but compared with the downsides
of the chemical dye, it's very benign.
It's like using beet juice.
Narrator: And just like that, carmine ended up
in strawberry and cream Frappuccinos
and cake pops at Starbucks,
in Tropicana grapefruit juice,
and, yes, in Yoplait yogurts.
Just look for carmine or cochineal extract
on the label to see for yourself.
But today, carmine is becoming harder and harder to come by.
Some companies like Campari Group,
maker of the famous Campari aperitif, have phased it out
for economic reasons in the US.
Greig: It's expensive to make. I mean, it's easier
to just make a chemical dye,
and this is a very specialized,
you have to farm these little bugs,
and collect billions of pounds of them,
and dry all them and all that, so
I think that just wasn't as practical.
Narrator: Other companies took it out because, well,
people still don't like eating bugs, especially vegans.
In 2012, a vegan news site
outed Starbucks for using cochineal
in its Strawberries and Crème Frappuccino,
saying that it's not vegan,
and a month later, the company said they'd switch
to a bug-free alternative.
In fact, Yoplait now remains
one of the only major brands that sells
food colored with carmine.
But even Yoplait may phase it out
after customers expressed concerns
about eating bug parts.
Greig: So I just think it's ironic
people are freaked out about insects, about eating insects,
even though we eat
2 pounds of insects a year on average by accident.
Narrator: And to show just how harmless they are,
we tried some.
Jones: Nope, just tastes like yogurt!
Not buggy at all, in fact.
Not that I would know what that would taste like,
but I'm really just getting plain Greek yogurt taste.