Frappuccino's colorful ingredients bug some vegetarians By Melissa Allison The Seattle Times 3/29/2012
SEATTLE _ When Starbucks changed its Frappuccino mix a couple years ago, it made sure the new ingredients were dairy-free. But no one said anything about being bug-free.
Turns out the strawberry sauce used in strawberries-and-cream Frappuccinos contains cochineal extract, which is made from the bodies of ground-up insects indigenous to Latin America.
A vegan barista who works for Starbucks sent a picture of the sauce's ingredient list to a vegetarian blog called www.ThisDishIsVegetarian.com, which posted it earlier this month. The revelation sparked some criticism from advocacy groups questioning the practice.
"The strawberry base for our Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino does contain cochineal extract, a common natural dye that is used in the food industry, and it helps us move away from artificial ingredients," said spokesman Jim Olson.
The base also is used in Starbucks' strawberry smoothies, he said, and the insect-derived extract is in some other foods and drinks the chain sells, including its red velvet whoopie pies.
Starbucks is hardly the only one.
Cochineal extract and a similar ingredient called carmine, also made from the insects, are bright red and can be found in fruit juices, gelatins and other foods, as well as many makeup products.
They were used for red dye in Mexico before the Spaniards arrived, and the Italian liqueur Campari originally contained carmine dye.
Tropicana's website lists carmine as a colorant in its non-refrigerated ruby red grapefruit juice, and Dole lists cochineal extract as an ingredient in some of its fruit-in-gel products.
Three years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said food and cosmetic products must declare on their labels that they contain cochineal extract or carmine. The rule went into effect in early 2011.
Until then, the insect additives often were listed as "artificial colors" or "color added."
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an activist group that pushed the FDA for the new labeling requirement, said the agency should have banned the colorants altogether or at least required that the labels explain that they come from insects.
"All food companies would be well advised to color their foods with real food and not either artificial dyes or an ostensibly natural dye like carmine," said the center's spokesman, Jeff Cronin.
In the case of Starbucks' strawberry Frappuccinos, he said, "I bet real strawberries could be used. Why simulate the color of strawberries when you could probably get a pretty good result with strawberries or beet juice or something that won't concern your customers?"
Cochineal extract and carmine cause allergic reactions in a small segment of the population, he said, and are off-limits for most Jews who keep kosher and vegans and vegetarians, who do not eat animals.
Joe M. Regenstein, a professor of food science at Cornell University, remembers Ben & Jerry's taking the cochineal-derived color out of its Cherry Garcia ice cream to make it kosher and to make its ingredient label easier to understand.
Cochineal colorants provide "fairly stable color compared to beet and red cabbage juice," he said. "Basically, (vegetable dyes) bleach. In natural markets, people have gotten used to the fact that colors are not as vibrant as when they used synthetic colors."
Now Cherry Garcia's label lists "fruit and vegetable concentrates" for color.
Other red foods that are more specific include Whole Foods' 365-brand pink lemonade, which includes sweet potato, red radish, cherry and apple extracts and Fuze strawberry guava's chokeberry and carrot extracts.
Crush orange soda and Minute Maid fruit punch are more old-fashioned. They use red dye No. 40.
Vegan Group Steaming Over Use Of Cochineal Extract In Chain's Beverages March 29, 2012
Starbucks has drawn the ire of a vegan group that is upset over the revelation that some of the coffee chain's drinks may not be vegetarian-friendly -- since the drinks contain the extract of ground-up insects.
According to the Website, thisdishisvegetarian.com, a barista who works for a Starbucks store in the Midwest forwarded a picture of the ingredient list of the new strawberry sauce used in the chain's Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino as well as its strawberry smoothies.
The list revealed that the sauce contains cochineal extract or carmine -- a red dye made from the bodies of dried parasitic insects, also used in cosmetics, shampoos and other foods.
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it takes as many as 70,000 cochineal beetles to extract enough red pigment to produce one pound of the dye.
The website reported that the barista who sent the picture said the recipe for the sauce must have been changed a few weeks ago -- in support of the company's efforts to offer dairy free drinks without artificial ingredients.
According to the Seattle Times, Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson confirmed that cochineal extract is used in some of the company's beverages.
"The strawberry base for our Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino does contain cochineal extract, a common natural dye that is used in the food industry, and it helps us move away from artificial ingredients," Olson said in a statement.
Cochineal extract is deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration, but a small segment of the population is allergic to it. So the agency requires it to be listed on the label of all food and cosmetics produced in the U.S. However, restaurants and cafes are exempt from displaying labeling on packaged food products.
Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccino ingredient 'bugging' some Mar 29, 2012 USA Today By Bruce Horovitz
Starbucks has the vegan community seeing red over what it recently began using to color its Strawberry Frappuccinos: beetles.
That's beetles as in ground up cochineal beetles - mostly found in Mexico and South America.
Gross as that may sound, it's a common, government-approved food coloring used widely throughout the food industry. It's in everything from some Yoplait yogurts to three Kellogg's Pop-Tarts flavors.
A Vegan website, ThisDishIsVeg.com, this month warned its readers that Strawberry Frappuccino was no longer vegan and now is using the beetles for coloring. Starbucks made the switch in January when it aggressively moved away from artificial ingredients.
For Starbucks, which is eager to get artificial ingredients out of its food and drinks, it's an unexpected PR problem. Never mind that Frappuccinos, in total, represent a $2 billion global business for Starbucks. "This is the quintessential modern day PR crisis," says PR expert Katie Delahaye Paine. "You try to be good and green, and someone is going to get you for it."
Daelyn Fortney, co-founder of the vegan website ThisDishIsVeg.com, was informed of the change by an anonymous Starbucks barista. She wants Starbucks to go back to using a vegan coloring like red beet, black carrots or purple sweet potatoes. She's posted a petition from her group on the website Change.org, under the heading, "Starbucks: Stop using bugs to color your strawberry colored drinks." Late Wednesday, it had 779 signatures.
"This was known as a drink that vegans can safely consume," she says. "We're not trying to cause any problems. Our point is, vegans are drinking this and it's not vegan."
But Starbucks says it's simply trying to do the right thing. "At Starbucks, we have the goal to minimize artificial ingredients in our products," spokeswoman Lisa Passe says.
Nutrition experts say it's the right idea, but the wrong execution. "Starbucks should be praised for getting rid of artificial ingredients," says Michael Jacobson, executive director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But since some folks have allergic reactions to insects, he says, "Strawberry Frapuccinno should be colored with strawberries."
Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University, says she's not concerned. "This is pretty far down on my list of outrageous food issues."
