Starbucks to phase out bug-based dyes from 6 food, drink items

AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

(CBS News) Starbucks announced today it will stop using cochineal extract - a food dye made from crushed up bugs - in four food and two beverage products.

Is Starbucks ditching bug dye from its Strawberry Frappuccinos?
Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccinos dyed with crushed up cochineal bugs, report says

Starbucks U.S. president Cliff Burrows wrote in a company blog that the company will transition to lycopene, a natural tomato-based extract used for coloring. Drinks such as the Strawberries and Creme Frappuccino blended beverage and Strawberry Banana Smoothies, as well as foods including Raspberry Swirl Cake, Birthday Cake Pop, Mini Donut with pink icing and Red Velvet Whoopie Pie.

"Our commitment to you, our customers, is to serve the highest quality products available," Burrows wrote. "As our customers you expect and deserve better - and we promise to do better.... Our intention is to be fully transitioned from existing product inventories to revised food and beverage offerings near the end of June across the U.S."

The crushed bug-brouhaha boiled over when vegetarian and vegan news site thisdishisvegetarian.com got a tip from a barista that Strawberry and Creme Frappuccinos were not vegan products because they contained the bug-based dye. That led to a social media backlash as well as a petition on Change.org to remove the dye from the product.

The FDA says the dye is safe and food and cosmetic labels must state if cochineal extract is present. Cochineal extract is often found in yogurts, candies, fruit drinks, ice creams, ketchup, lipsticks, eyeshadow, nail polish and other pink and red products. The extract, also known as "carmine" or "crimson lake," has been used for thousands of years to dye fabrics by crushing up their dried bodies.

[johntate777]

Starbugs!

[hypnotoad72]

Incidentally, and entirely off-topic, the last three articles I'd read all contained horrible blunders of editing. Is the grammar and spell checker in Word disabled, because somebody threw a fit over all the red, green, and/or blue squiggles under words?

[hypnotoad72]

I mean, in this article at the time of this writing, what's a "prudct"?

[hypnotoad72]

People might not want to know what's in "gelatin" these days, much less what's in "milk".

Try "ground up horse hooves" and "pus" respectively.

Happy lawsuits...

Good effing grief. Most red dyes in food and clothing come from a certain beetle. If you want to ingest chemicals, that's your business. Happy trippin', dudes.


Lastly, about that fourth paragraph, spare us the empty platitudes. Everyone says them but anyone can quickly find how hollow their prattle is.

[3trplback]

As long as Starbucks thumbs in nose at Defense of Marriage (DOMA) I will go there....bugs or not! But I agree strawberries from a local grower would be great.....

[Jaylah54]

Of course I suppose it would be totally out of the question to color those items with actual strawberries or raspberries?

[hypnotoad72]

To do so might force them to be honest when they deliver such empty melodramatics as "Our commitment to you, our customers, is to serve the highest quality products available," followed by the long strong of gibber regarding promises.

Sorry, but in "the new normal", too many people have seen too much quality cutting just so the difference can boost (undeserved) profits. You don't cheat to improve profits and expect to be taken seriously in return.

[RushOxycontin]

If Starbucks put strawberries in them, they wouldn't need dead bugs as food coloring.

[hypnotoad72]

*zing*

Or to, perhaps, enhance the color, since people want the visual look and 50 strawberries leads to a more reddish color (and proper flavor) than 5 of them used in the drink or whatever...