How are these bug juices made from the bugs?
Grinding and the boiling or something?
I am way curious about this, any of you guys care to investigate?
CB
I think the column being referred to is: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/merythorbate.html
This Mailbag item, written by SDStaff Jill, references several columns by Cecil on bug components used in other food products:
Agave worms in mezcal: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/990702.html
chocolate covered ants: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/991008.html
beetle juice used as glazes in some candies: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_118.html
In the last column Cecil mentions a couple of other bug pseudonyms in label ingredients: carmine, which gives fruit cocktail cherries their red color, is derived from dried cochineal insects, and confectioners glaze, which is used as a coating on Junior Mints candy, is a secretion of the lac beetle.
Doug, maybe you can help us on how insects are milked (the image of a little bucket and tiny three-legged stool under a rhinocerous beetle is one that just won’t get out of my mind.)
I don’t see why people find the idea of insect secretions and the like so gross. After all, what is honey if not partially-digested nectar that has been vomited up by bees?
I just wanted to clarify something here. “Confectioners glaze” is a pretty generic terms used throughout the candy industry to mean all sorts of different things. It may, indeed, indeed some beetle secretion for Junior Mints (ick!), but it can mean something very different for other candies.
Well, the “mystery” bugs seem to be the cochineal insect and the lac insect. Neither are beetles; they are types of scale insects, sedentary relatives of aphids and mealybugs. To the best of my knowledge, their two respective products, cochineal dye (carmine) and shellac (that’s what that type of “confectioner’s glaze” is; the wax portion of the extracted goo) are both gathered by scraping the insect off the host plant and then just processing the resulting mess to extract and purify the desired substance. Some time remind me to tell you about manna. I’m taking off on vacation imminently.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Honeybees prefer legume pollen for some reason, so honey is usually mainly clover and alfalfa pollen half-digested and thrown up by bees.
Which explains why so many people these days are allergic to honey.
I’ve read the columns you ferred too, CD, i just meant, how do they actually collect he secreations? Do they have bug farms and the bugs leave piles of teh stuff like bees do, or, do they vacum up their turds?