Curious Consumption
The cochineal, an insect native to South America and Mexico, turns up regularly on the ingredient lists of foods we eat all the time. When you see carmine, carminic acid, cochineal, or natural red #4 sandwiched between modified corn starch and kosher gelatin, that's foodspeak for dried female beetle, a phrase you'll never see on the label of your strawberry yogurt. The cochineal's red dye, known as carmine, also makes ice cream, fruit fillings, and juices look more authentic. The ingredient is natural, not artificial.
If you can afford it, you can get your morning java from coffee beans tagged by CBC News as “Cat Poop Coffee,” labeled tellingly as “Good to the Last Dropping.” Coffee starts out as coffee berries; the beans are really the seeds. When Sumatra-, Java-, or Bali-based civets consume coffee berries, enzymes permeate the seeds, which reappear a few days later with a higher than average protein value and in need of a good wash. These civets, or wild cats, make coffee beans a delicacy, upping the value to around $75 per half pound.
I remember saying once after watching a documentary about odd delicacies around that world that “I would not under any circumstances eat chocolate-covered grasshoppers.” But I've heard the rumor that insect legs are common incidental additions to chocolate in general. My husband Jeff tells me not to worry about that. “Just think of it as extra protein.”
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