I hate to ask a newbie question

[leastconcern]

The food colorings: yellow lake 4, blue lake 6, etc. Are they infact vegan? What the hell are they, anyway? I do know that fake-o maraschino cherries are made from a food coloring that is not vegan (if you can tell me what it contains, even better). From my understanding, this has not been discussed from the tags I extensively peeked at. I'm

Comments

[supercarrot]

yeah, most of the food colors are made from coal tar... click through wikipedia sometime when you have a few hours to waste. it's actually all very fascinating. (and amazing that so many of them are ok'ed to be put into our food supplies)

who knew so many different colors would come from the same source?

[leastconcern]

That's so weird. I mean, is coal tar basically a boiled version of coal?

[supercarrot]

ok, i'm making an educated guess before i google... i'm assuming it's what's left over after burning the coal for electricity production. (cause why would they make food items out of perfectly good coal? and what else would they do with coal-burning by-products if they couldn't make food out of it?)

ok. now goes to google.

"Coal tar is a brown or black liquid of high viscosity, which smells of naphthalene and aromatic hydrocarbons. Coal tar is among the by-products when coal is carbonized to make coke or gasified to make coal gas."

close! gotta love america! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_tar

[leastconcern]

Why I don't drink coca-cola, you drug-addict drinkers.

It is true that cocaine was in coca-cola, as I watched History of Drugs on History Channel (so...bored that day...) and, a thought just occured to me.

Who the fuck burned coal, said "hey this might taste good" + sugar + cocaine.

[supercarrot]

actually, caramel color is made from sugar, so that's a safe food color. :-) i don't think there are any coal tar derivatives in coca-cola.

(and they knew cocaine was addictive, so that's why they did it. also, i think cocaine used to be an actual medical treatment. i forget what for, but coca-cola was originally a medicine.)

[catnip13]

It's a pretty potent painkiller, note the similar nomenclature to lidocaine and novacaine, and is still used in some topical and local anesthesia.

[i_hate_music]

yes, they did have cocaine in cola but they had it in everything, basicly. In normal medicine, in cough pills etc etc. A bit like alcohol still is...

[misledyouth00]

cocaine is still actually in coca cola, albeit a very low dose where they have most of the whatever it is that fucks you up bred out of the strain of plant they use.
they still use the plant for flavoring as it gives you that slightly metallic 'bite'. their plantation is located somewhere in hawaii.

theres this really great book called 'cocaine' that goes all into the history of the drug and its really way interesting. i swear i'm not a soda junkie or anything like that.

[darkfurie]

Easy to confuse, but the coke made in coal production is not the same as the coke some of us (guilty...) drink.