DO YOU KNOW what passes your lips, or even what's on them? Comestible ingredients of unobvious origin are hardly rare. Carrageenan and agar-agar, thickeners and emulsifiers in a wide swath of food products, are made from algae. Rennin, a milk-curdling enzyme used in cheese-making, originates in an animal's – usually a calf's fourth – stomach lining. Glucosamine, the popular joint-health supplement, derives from the exoskeletons of crustacea. Vanillin, the compound that gives the vanilla bean its distinctive flavor, is also obtained from fermented spruce bark, and petroleum. Frosty lipstick may contain fish scales. A particularly startling and fascinating ingredient – in juices, lipsticks, carpets, and sundry other products – is the cochineal insect, from whence comes carmine, the reddest red.

Cochineal, often erroneously referred to as a beetle, is a scale insect native to Central and South America, and, like its dread relative, the mealybug (feared by houseplant cultivators everywhere), is a parasite that literally sucks the life out of a plant. The cochineal's chosen host is the cactus genus Opuntia, of which the prickly pear is a member. The females of the cochineal species are the useful party in the production of dye. Wingless and inert, they munch on the cactus leaves, waiting for their eggs to mature. During this period, three months or so, they swell with the carminic acid that is the source of the vivid red for which they are cultivated. (The "resinous exudation" of a different species of scale insect is also used – to produce shellac. Who knew these suckers to be so useful?)

In colonial times the cochineal had a serious impact in the areas where it was cultivated, and this continues to a lesser degree in the present day – though the impact of its cultivation has not been on the immense scale of the beverage many of us consume every day, coffee. But that's another story. Peru is still a major exporter of cochineal, and though a pound of the insect goes for less than $1.50, "harvesting the bug earns enough money to feed and clothe a whole family in the impoverished highlands region.... An estimated 40,000 Peruvian families depend on harvesting the bugs ... to make a living," according to a National Public Radio piece on the industry. The cochineals are brushed off the cactus, treated with dry or steam heat, then dried and ground up. For food use in the United States, the dye must also be pasteurized. About 70,000 bugs are needed to make a pound of powdered dye.

Indigenous peoples have used cochineal as a fabric dye for centuries, and the Mixtecs considered it quite precious. The Spanish had a monopoly on the cochineal industry for at least a century, exporting tons of it to Europe from the Americas beginning in the 1500s. Curiously enough, cochineal replaced kermes, a European oak parasite that had hitherto been the source of red dye (hence the word carmine). Cochineal's red proved truer, and it was in high demand until the 1800s, when synthetic dyes began to be manufactured. Cochineal was apparently used to dye the famous redcoats of British officers.

By the 1980s cochineal extract in food products had been mainly replaced by aniline (petroleum or coal-based) dyes, such as FD&C red no. 40, which is sported by Doritos, Life Savers, and countless other products on supermarket shelves. Cochineal's use in food seems to have made a comeback in the 1990s, in connection with concern over the possible carcinogenic nature of aniline dyes and a general cultural trend in favor of "naturally" flavored and colored food products. A cursory tour of Andronico's aisles today reveals "cochineal extract," "carmine," or "carmine color" in Tropicana orange strawberry juice, Kern's aguas frescas, and Yoplait berry yogurts and mousses. Red, pink, or orange foods that say merely "natural color" may also contain cochineal.

A few years ago the Center for Science in the Public Interest led a push to have cochineal either banned or clearly disclosed on labels, citing the danger of anaphylactic shock for those allergic to the substance. Besides, eating insects is not kosher, halal, or palatable to vegetarians, though one cochineal industry executive declares that vegetarians need not fear – the proteins in food-grade cochineal extract have been removed during processing. Sounds like he doesn't quite get it. As you might imagine, the cochineal industry tries to keep a low profile. I'm looking forward to their first TV spot, panning across the misty highlands of Peru, slowly focusing in on the heart-warming sight of the natives in traditional dress crushing bloody-looking bugs. Then cut to a cute container of raspberry yogurt. Kind of like a Tejava ad, except more graphic.

I don't have a problem with eating bugs. I get a bit of a kick thinking I can eat a substance that's also been used to create some of the most beautiful and famous pieces of fabric history has yet to see. Besides, cochineal extract is so concentrated that one probably doesn't ingest more than a couple drops a year. Unless you're really into strawberry-flavored foods. I'm more worried about those mouse genes they might be splicing into my corn. I have yet to see a single label with the disclosure "contains mouse extract."