rerun #936 Beetle Mania

Not long ago I was talking with a coffee snob. You know, one of those guys who would never deign to foul his palate with the likes of Yuban and Folgers. He was waxing rhapsodic about the delicate nuances of the particular coffee he loves, and he went over into that "blah blah blah" section of my brain I reserve for the pompous and the adolescent.
People who know everything are handy to have around sometimes, other times you’d rather dwell on the sweetness of the phrase “silence is golden.”
This guy was a barista or, since he was male, possibly a baristo, so I guess I should forgive him his enthusiasm. But not his attempt to belittle those of us who find it economically appropriate to buy and use a big can of Folgers.
So to shut him up I said, “Oh, I don’t know, I kinda like Folgers. Nothing like the occasional acrid taste-burst of an accidentally ground up beetle.
I affected everyone’s palate at that point.
But you know what? If you eat the red food coloring carmine, you’re eating ground-up beetles. The cochineal beetle to be exact. It’s legal to use in American food products. It’s also used to blend the colors pink, orange, and purple. Ground-up beetles, a pallet for your palate.
Since some people are deathly allergic to carmine, food activists are pressuring the FDA to include ground-up beetles on food labeling. As of this writing, the FDA only requires that companies use the designation “artificial coloring” to describe it.
And frankly I’m outraged.
It’s driving me crazy. A little beetle mania if you will. Because there’s nothing artificial about a beetle. It was a living thing. If anything does, it deserves the honor of being described as a natural food color.
It gave its all for you. Unable to skitter away from the grinding blades, it ended up in your purple skittles.
So let’s not demean it any further by including it with unfeeling, uncaring, chemical dies.
These guys died to be a dye.
And if you’re allergic, a dye that can make you die too.
BTW, Folgers uses no artificial colors.
America, ya gotta love it.