Name: The Bugs That Turn Strawberry Yogurt Red
Uploaded: 2020-11-21T18:35:29.000Z
Duration: 4 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Narrator: No one likes finding bugs in their food

you're actually eating them all the time.

that end up in juices or jams by accident.

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.

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,

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.

that they made their way into commercial foods.

From 1955 to 2010, the consumption of food coloring

That's mostly thanks to artificial colors

But in the late 20th century, consumers became

increasingly concerned about synthetic chemicals

in their foods and demanded more natural ingredients.

It resists degradation from light, heat, and oxidation,

it hasn't been linked to cancers or tumor growth.

Greig: Now, some people apparently have allergies to it,

Narrator: And just like that, carmine ended up

Just look for carmine or cochineal extract

But today, carmine is becoming harder and harder to come by.

maker of the famous Campari aperitif, have phased it out

Greig: It's expensive to make. I mean, it's easier

Narrator: Other companies took it out because, well,

people still don't like eating bugs, especially vegans.

in its Strawberries and Crème Frappuccino,

and a month later, the company said they'd switch

people are freaked out about insects, about eating insects,

2 pounds of insects a year on average by accident.

Narrator: And to show just how harmless they are,

Not that I would know what that would taste like,

but I'm really just getting plain Greek yogurt taste.

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The Bugs That Turn Strawberry Yogurt Red

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