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

[br0ken_dolly]

i thought nerds had gelatin?

anyhow, some red is carmine, which is crushed beetles.

this is an interesting (if technical) article on colorings, which may give you a starting point for googling where specific colors come from:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8134foodcoloring.html

[leastconcern]

Nerds ROPE have gelatin. Plain nerds, no.

[br0ken_dolly]

oh gotcha.

[leastconcern]

P.s: Beetles. Wow. Okay, just wow.

And thank you for that artical, I will definately abuse google now. Abuse it hardcore.

[uppity_heathen]

hmm all the boxes of regular nerds i have seen have gelatin. my g-ma used to make the wonka candy in a factory and brought lots of it home and the nerds were never vegetarian.

[leastconcern]

I have two different boxes, the white/red ones, and the watermelon apple ones. I don't see any gelatin in it, however, the red one has carmine in it.

[leastconcern]

http://www.walgreens.com/store/product.jsp?CATID=302653&id=prod1982427 This being the regular nerds, right?

I have the box with the two different flavores seperated by that flimsy carboard center.

[mushyasparagus]

Hey, they list the ingredients there - http://www.walgreens.com/store/product.jsp?CATID=302653&id=prod1982427#ingredient

One of which is carmine.

[industrialvixen]

Although you didn't mention it specifically, red 40 is made from coal, I believe, making it fairly vegan, though carcinogenic. Thumbs up! (I mean... anything made from coal tar HAS to be a carcinogen, right? Anyway)

[leastconcern]

You know, this is ruining my Valentine's Day already. Because, being lonely and single JUST WASN'T ENOUGH.

THANK YOU, WONKA FUCKING CANDY COMPANY.

*sobs on industrialvixen's shoulder*

[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.

[theloveofvegan]

if you are looking for vegan candy
lizlovely makes awesome vegan snacks
cookies and yum yum

http://www.lizlovely.com

i had a big gift basket sent to myself this year ;)