The GeoGee Show  

Very few people know that the food coloring listed as cochineal extract comes from female beetles. That's right, when you dig into a strawberry  yogurt, take a moment to contemplate the fact the beautiful pink color comes from not the strawberries, but crushed bugs. Specifically, from the female cochineal beetles and their eggs. Now it's just yogurt, the bugs are also used to give red coloring to colorful candies, grapefruit juice, and other common foods.

Then there is that pretty pink farm raised salmon. Fresh, farm-raised salmon get their orange-red hue from eating the chemicals astaxanthin and canthaxanthin. Wild salmon are pink because they eat shrimp-like creatures called krill. But to achieve the same pink color, farmed salmon need chemicals, which are mixed with their feed.

A little research on what behind some of those appetizing products on the grocery shelves will unveil eyeopeners and mouth closers such as the fact that processed bacon and ham get their red tint from sodium ascorbate, an antioxidant and color stabilizer. Consider a major cake icing manufacturer's icing gets its bright white color not from natural cream and egg whites but from titanium dioxide, a mineral that is also used in house paints.

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