 Is it true that there's a food dye made out of crushed bugs? Fact or fiction? Fact, and here she is, the pregnant cochineal beetle. This is what she looks like when you smush them, and this is what it looks like when you lick them. And it doesn't say contains bugs on the label. It says things like color added. So when parents feed their children yogurt, for example, they may be feeding them a strawberry splash of boiled insects. Unappetizing? Perhaps, but harmful? Bug juice is, after all, a natural color. I mean, there's nothing artificial about bugs. In fact, the reason they use them is because some of the artificial red dyes, like red number three, were banned as carcinogens. But who still thinks they're harmful? Who thinks gross but harmless? Anyone think they could maybe use the extra protein? Cochineal beetle extract is harmful. Sends hundreds of people to the emergency room every year so potentially dangerous that the Center for Science and the Public Interest has called for all bug-based dyes to be exterminated. The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, refuses to ban it, but they did announce this year that they will at least start requiring it to be listed in the ingredients instead of just being color added. Good news for those of us who'd rather listen to the beetles than eat any. Of course, the labeling law won't go into effect until 2011, but until then I have a suggestion for food companies. Should you want to make your cherry popsicles red? How about adding some cherries?