Bug juice

My kids like SoBe Lifewater which we'll sometimes get them if we're driving around somewhere and end up getting drinks and snacks out of a convenience store.  It's not really good for them since a quick look at the ingredients list shows that it's basically flavored sugar water.

Ingredients: Filtered Water, Sugar, Erythritol, Natural Flavor, Monopotassium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Potassium Citrate, Calcium Lactate, Modified Food Starch, Cochineal Extract (Color), Taurine, Vitamin E Acetate, Calcium Phosphate, Gum Arabic, Panax Ginseng Root Extract, Calcium Pantothenate, Niacinamide, Elderberry Juice Concentrate (Color), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12). Filtered Water, Sugar, Erythritol, Natural Flavor, Monopotassium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Potassium Citrate, Calcium Lactate, Modified Food Starch, Cochineal Extract (Color), Taurine, Vitamin E Acetate, Calcium Phosphate, Gum Arabic, Panax Ginseng Root Extract, Calcium Pantothenate, Niacinamide, Elderberry Juice Concentrate (Color), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

Anyway, we were reading the ingredients list once (we try to get the kids to pay attention to such things) and noticed cochineal extract.  I told them that it came from bugs but no one believed me.

Cochineal bugs (Dactylopius coccus) are parasitic scale insects that live on Mexican to South American cacti.  They produce a chemical called carminic acid (C22H20O13) which deters predators and from which you can obtain a crimson-red dye.  This dye has been in use since the time of the Aztecs.  It's use waned in the 20th century with the use of synthetic red dyes but many of these artificial dyes were found to be carcinogenic (like the infamous red dye #2) so cochineal use has picked up in recent decades.  The dye goes by many names including "cochineal extract", "carmine", "crimson lake", "natural red 4", "C.I. 75470", "E120", and "natural colouring".

To make the dye, the insects are manually collected from the cacti (very labor intensive), dropped in boiling water to kill them and then dried.  After drying out, they are crushed into a powder and boiled with sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) or other chemicals (sodium carbonate is naturally occuring in some some alkaline "soda" lakes).  It supposedly takes some 70,000 insects to yield one pound of dye.

Cochineal bugs on a cactus pad (they exude a white waxy substance)

Knowing that cochineal extract comes from insects hasn't deterred my kids from drinking Lifewater but they do refer to it as "bug juice" now.