You Dipped It In What Now?

Let us discuss one of the many joys of being a vegetarian. See, when you go all veggie like, you have to start paying attention to everything that's in your foods, so you start reading ingredient labels. Then you realize that you don't what half that crap is that they list as ingredients, so you start finding out where it comes from.

That's where the real fun begins.

Take, for example, marshmallows. What could possibly be more non-threatening than a marshmallow, a little pillow of sugary goodness, bringing up fond memories of campfires, hot chocolate, or little, brightly colored Easter chicks. But then you read the ingredients, and see gelatin. For the average uninformed consumer, no big, because that's just an ingredient in numerous delicious desert type dishes.

Ah, but under that innocent exterior lies a dark secret, for the production of gelatin actually involves extracting the connective tissue of deceased animals. To quote WikiPedia, "Gelatin is a protein produced by partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted from the bones, connective tissues, organs, and some intestines of animals such as the domesticated cattle, and horses.". Um...ewww. So now when I see a marshmallow, all I can see is this huge witch's cauldron filled with churning bones and intestines. Let me tell you, it sucks the fun right out of s'mores.



Okay, so that's nasty, but I can get over it because it's essentially the same as eating meat. Not everything is so simple though. See, I'm not a vegan, so I don't protest things like eating honey. Sure, it's a little weird, but we're all used to it, right?

One day I'm reading the ingredients of a nut mix that has candy coated chocolate pieces, and one of the ingredients was shellac. Now, I found myself a little thrown by finding a product I normally associate with picture frames and paint primer in my food, but I figure the good old FDA must have looked into it and found it acceptable. Plus, it was a failure on the part of the candy company's marketing department, since it is commonly called confectioner's glaze, which sound a lot more food like in my opinion. Nonetheless, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to find out where it came from. Stupid curiosity.

Turns out that shellac is made from lac, and that lac is a secretion of lac producing insects. So, in essence, my candy was covered in bug juice (along with a certain number of bugs that got caught up in the collection process). Again, for those that continue eating meat and dairy product, obviously consuming the bodily fluids of another species isn't something you find bothersome (although I've noticed that when I refer to milk as 'bodily fluids' around them, they do find that bothersome - go figure). For those of us that have moved away from that, this is, again, unsettling.

Honestly, there are times that I long for the good old days, the days where I would order a plate of nachos without even looking at what came on it, or would not hesitate to eat a shrink wrapped meat stick from a convenience store. Those were the flighty, innocent days of my youth, and yes, occasionally I miss them.

I do not, however, miss my size 48 pants.