Have you ever heard of vegan dyes?!


Question:

Have you ever heard of vegan dyes?

I recently found out that a brand of natural clothing I purchased sometimes uses insects to dye their clothing. It is usually only in the reds and purples. Thank God I only purchased the yellow. But come to find out they use insect dyes for other things like in Jello, and to color paper, etc. What do you know about this and how can I avoid supporting such a practice? Apparently they use a vats of these tiny creatures just to make the dye.

Additional Details

1 month ago
blackbyr…, Yes I did know that Jello was not vegan and I have not eaten it in years. Thanks for the heads up.


Answers:
1 month ago
blackbyr…, Yes I did know that Jello was not vegan and I have not eaten it in years. Thanks for the heads up.

Its called cochineal which was earlier discussed here :

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...



E120 - cochineal (red food coloring made from crushed beetles)
Some red dyes are made from the cochineal beetle. These are usually labeled as cochineal, carmine, or carminic acid

What is FD & C Red #40 and is it vegan?

FD & C Red #40 is 99% coal tar derivatives. We don't know of any animal products in it. For years a rumor has claimed that it is made of cochineal or carmine, but that is not true

Source(s):
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/faqingredien...
http://vegan-info.com/additives.html#c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/carmine...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cochineal...

I'm with Katie G.

Tangential to your question, but you realize Jello isn't vegetarian anyway, right (contains gelatin)? Just making sure you used that as a random example and haven't been chowing down on the Jello... eating something you thought was safe, then finding out much later = veg*an nightmare!




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