Seeing red: Cooking with bugs?
If you’re looking for a natural red food color, carmine can deliver. It’s vibrant, but stable, and prices have recently returned from the stratosphere after hikes in 2010/11.
The only problem is that it’s made from crushed insects, and once they find this out, many consumers - especially vegans and vegetarians - aren’t happy, claims LycoRed, which pulled out all the stops to entertain and inform visitors about alternative natural red coloring options from tomatoes at the IFT show this year with a provocative (but tongue in cheek) video on cooking with bugs and a box packed with creepy crawly weirdness.
Unlike beet powder (which can lack heat and light stability) or anthocyanins from grape skin and purple carrot (which can change color in high pH formulations or turn brown in the presence of ascorbic acid), LycoRed’s Tomat-O-Red natural lycopene colorant is stable in the presence of ascorbic acid, keeps its shade in high pH applications and can handle extreme heat, and cold.
It’s also suitable for vegans and vegetarians, shoppers seeking kosher and halal products, and consumers that just don’t like the idea of crushed bugs in their strawberry smoothies, says LycoRed business development VP Doug Lynch.
Check out the video on YouTube by clicking here: