Is it true gelatin is made from decaying animal hides?
Well as if that wasn’t gross enough, in english class we were watching this national geographic video and it said that red jell-o is made from squished up bugs. Nasty. Does anyone know if it’s true? And why just red jell-o?
There is a red dye made from bugs, but I have no idea if that’s the same red dye they use in Jell-o. From another of Cecil’s columns (Is some candy coated with beetle juice?)
Jell-O is colored with FD&C certified food dyes; I believe they use Red #40 (a synthetic) for the red stuff. The cochineal insects are used to prepare the red dye called carmine, which is rarely used.
Jell-O may have contained carmine at one time, but I think they have kosher certification, which is incompatible with carmine (check me on this, O Jewish folk?). Jello-O used to be prohibited by the OU, but I understand that they came to terms not long ago.