Vegetarian, Vegan, or Squeamish?
WHAT are we eating? That’s a good question. Do we read through the long list of ingredients every time we pick up a food product? Well if you don’t, you could be in for a surprise.
For example, a new snack bar at the shop contains cricket flour. Yes, cricket flour. I don’t know about you but I nearly got sick at the idea of eating crickets. But we better get used to it because crickets are fast becoming the new cool protein source. I will not eat something with cricket flour in it. So it was good that the company had a picture of a rather large cricket on the packet to draw my attention to the ingredients.
Gelatin is something else that I don’t like to eat, so I was disappointed to find it in my favourite protein bar. It may be included because for its therapeutic value–but that won’t change my mind. Gelatin is extracted from the skin, bones, and connective tissue of animals such as cattle, chicken, or pigs. It’s a gelling agent commonly found in chewy sweets, jelly sweets, jelly, and also yoghurts, protein bars, and marshmallows.
Shellac may be listed on the packet of glazed or chocolate coated sweets. This is a resin secreted by the female lac bug. Enough said. Feel sick? Once the resin is processed it’s sold as dry flakes which are dissolved in ethanol to make liquid shellac which can be used as a colourant or as the final glaze on the food. The ingredients won’t list “female lac bug cocoon” however!
Carmic acid, or ‘Carmines’, are food colouring that gives food a red colour. This particular food colouring is made from a female insect called Cochineal. The scales of the insect are crushed into a red powder. You may find it in alcohol, fruit pie fillings, jams, some sweets, and even some cheeses.
Camel milk, and chocolate coated silk worms are already popular in other parts of the world. We need to read our labels so that we know exactly what we are eating.
All the more reason to cook from scratch, we’ll know exactly what’s in the pot, and we won’t need a magnifying glass to read the ingredients, or a dictionary to explain them.