Ewwwww What's on Your Easter Candy??

reposted from Village Green Network

Jelly beans, a favorite Easter candy. But when you find out what’s actually in jelly beans, you may not want to eat them anymore.

The Shocking Truth About Jelly Beans

Jelly beans are coated with shellac to make them shiny. Shellac, also known as pharamceutical glaze or confectioner’s glaze, is recognized as GRAS under the FDA or Generally Recognized As Safe for human consumption. But just because it’s safe, doesn’t mean you want to eat it.

The disgusting fact is that shellac, used on jelly beans, is made from the excrement of beetles.In other words, beetle dung, or bug poop.

How Shellac Is Made

The female lac bug, Kerria lacca, found in the forests of India and Thailand, secretes excrement (poop), which forms a tunnel-like tube on the branches of trees. These tunnels referred to as cocoons, although they are not really cocoons. The insects live off of the sap of the tree and excrete the dung onto the tree.

The beetle dung is scraped from the tree branches and heated. The raw shellac, which contains bark shavings and lac bug parts, begins to liquefy, and the bark and bug bits are strained out. The sticky shellac is then dried into a flat sheet and broken up into flakes, then bagged and sold. The dried shellac is then mixed with denatured alcohol in order to dissolve the flakes and make liquid shellac.

Where Is Shellac Used?

Shellac is used in the manufacture of a number of products including furniture polish and varnish; aluminum foil; lipstick, hairspray, shampoos, mascara and perfume; printing ink and paints; pharmaceutical tablets; and agricultural fertilizer.

In foods, shellac is most commonly used as a coating or glaze on confections, chewing gum, and coffee beans, as well as some fruits including apples.

Candies (Other Than Jelly Beans) That Contain Shellac

As a general rule, all hard-coated, shiny candies contains a shellac coating or glaze. M&Ms™ is one exception — they do not contain shellac.

• Hershey’s Whopper’s Malted Milk Balls™
• Hershey’s Milk Duds™
• Nestle’s Raisinettes™
• Nestle’s Goober’s™
• Junior Mints™
• Sugar Babies™
• Godiva’s™ Dark Chocolate Almond Bar; Dark Chocolate Cherries; Milk Chocolate Cashews; White Chocolate Pearls; Milk Chocolate Pearls
• Halloween candy corn

Monsanto Butter?

By trying to incorporate good healthy fats into your diet you could be eating butter from cows fed a GMO (genetically modified organism) loaded diet. Vani Hari; The Food Babe breaks down the culprits and some safer, and safe alternatives to avoiding GMO butter. 

READ this great article by Vani Hari, the Food Babe:
http://foodbabe.com/2014/01/20/is-butter-secretly-ruining-your-health/

Industry Proposal Would Bar GE Food Labels | Environmental Working Group

Industry Proposal Would Bar GE Food Labels | Environmental Working Group

Washington, D.C. – A new legislative proposal drafted by the food industry that would make it impossible for any state to require labeling of genetically engineered food reveals how far some big companies will go to hide basic information from their own customers, EWG President Ken Cook said today.
POLITICO published a draft of the bill today. It shows that the food industry wants to bar states from requiring GE labels on food and to limit the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to compel food companies to use GE labeling.
“Clearly, this is an industry that will stop at nothing to hide from its customers basic information on what’s in their food,” said Cook. “If this proposal were to become law, it would make it impossible for any state to require labeling of GE foods, even if an overwhelming majority of its residents demand it.”