https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/do-you-want-artificial-or-natural-dyes-your-food-wrong-question The use of artificial food dyes is being vigorously questioned these days. Better to question the foods in which such dyes are used. The little bugs are making news. Carmine, the “natural” red dye they produce, is set to be more widely used as the food industry rails from allegations that its “petroleum-based, artificial” colourants are, in the words of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “poisonous.” Before going any further, let me state that I am not opposed to the phasing out of food dyes, be they synthetic or natural, because they serve only a cosmetic purpose and make no nutritional contribution. But removing a food dye that serves as eye candy from candy will not make that candy any healthier. By and large, food dyes are used to make highly processed foods that present legitimate health concerns more appealing and their presence can be regarded as a marker for such foods. No dyes are to be found in in apples, berries, whole grains, lentils, beans or chicken. While there are valid reasons to consider banning some food dyes, their being “petroleum-based” or “artificial” are not among them. The potential toxicity of a substance is not determined by its ancestry! Whether a chemical is made by “Mother Nature” in a plant or by a chemist in a lab has no bearing on its toxicity which is determined by its molecular structure. What matters is what the safety trials show, not the source of a chemical. Ethanol produced industrially from ethylene derived from petroleum is identical to ethanol produced by the fermentation of grapes. We don’t avoid ibuprofen, naproxen, acetaminophen or aspirin because they are synthetic, nor do we shun them because the compounds from which they are synthesized are derived from petroleum. And we certainly don’t assume that all mushrooms are safe to eat because they are natural, and we are quick to discard berries with any sign of contamination with totally natural mould and rightly so. Then there is the issue of “poisonous." By definition, a poison is a substance that can in some way injure the health of a living organism. But there is a critical corollary to that definition, namely the common dictum that “only the dose makes the poison.” In an appropriate dose morphine is an effective painkiller, in an overdose it becomes just a killer. Calling food dyes poisonous without context, without mentioning that carcinogenicity was observed only in rodents fed amounts far in excess of doses to which humans could possibly be exposed, or that there is scant evidence for supposed behavioural effects, smacks of a muddled grasp of science. Neither is it reasonable to avoid cochineal extract, as some people do, because it comes from an insect. First, there is nothing wrong with eating insects, and second, the dye is a highly purified extract that does not contain insect parts. Now about that insect extract that is being touted as a “natural” alternative to ‘artificial” dyes. It comes with a fascinating history. The first item of commerce to be exported from the New World to the Old was not corn or tobacco or rubber. It was bug juice. At least in a manner of speaking. When Hernan Cortez came to America in 1518, he was intrigued by the beautifully colored Aztec fabrics, particularly the stunning reds. He asked the natives about the source of the colorant and was shown some specks on a cactus plant. Closer scrutiny revealed that the little specks were actually little bugs. Today we know them as Dactylopius coccus, or simply as cochineal. The dye that can be extracted from these insects is called carmine. Montezuma was so fond of it that he imposed a tax upon his subjects that had to be paid in dried cochineal bugs. It takes about 70,000 females to produce a pound of dye. The males are quite useless in this respect. They are also rare and live for only a week, just long enough to mate with as many females as possible. And how are they separated? The males can fly but the wingless females cannot. When the cactus is disturbed, the males scoot, but the females cannot escape. They are scraped off, dumped into hot water where they instantly die. Their corpses are then dried in the sun and crushed into a powder that is used as a dye destined to color our cherry or strawberry flavoured yogurt and ice cream giving the impression that they contain more fruit than they actually do. And therein lies the problem with food dyes. Their intent is to deceive. Other than rare allergies, there is no safety issue with carmine, but replacing artificial dyes with this natural colourant will allow a label declaration of “no artificial dyes” that may suggest to parents that strawberry gummies coloured with carmine are a better choice for their kids than those coloured with artificial dyes. The better choice is to give them strawberries.