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Shellac: That Candy Coating On Your Sweets Really Comes From The Rear End Of A Beetle

June 13th, 2011 Posted by: admin Category: Food Science | 6 Comments » \\Topics: candy coating, eating bugs, food revolution, gross, Jamie Oliver, shellac

How often do you think you are eating bugs? Probably more often than you think. Did you know that most candy coatings are actually made out from secretions that came out of a bug.

The stuff on your candy coatings is known as Shellac, an ingredient that is used in many candies, pharmaceuticals, and industries.

Technically Shellac is recognized as GRAS under the FDA or Generally Recognized As Safe for human consumption.

Many people are shocked and a little disgusted when they find out that the source of shellac is from the rear end of a beetle like bug. The other name for shellac,confectioner’s glaze, sounds much sweeter than dried beetle juice.

How Shellac Is Made

Shellac is scraped from the bark of the trees where the female lac bug, Kerria lacca, secretes it to form a tunnel-like tube as it traverses the branches of tree. These tunnels referred to as “cocoons”, but they are not literally cocoons in the entomological sense. The insects suck the sap of the tree and excrete “stick-lac” almost constantly.

The raw shellac, which contains bark shavings and lac bug parts, is placed in canvas tubes and heated over a fire.

This causes the shellac to liquefy, and it seeps out of the canvas leaving the bark and bug parts behind. The thick sticky shellac is then dried into a flat sheet and broken up into flakes when dried, and then bagged and sold. The end-user then mixes it with denatured alcohol in order to dissolve the flakes and make liquid shellac.

Where Is Shellac Used?

Shellac, in one or more of its various forms, (bleached, dewaxed, etc.), may be found in a wide variety of products including furniture polish and varnish; aluminum foil coating; paper coating; hairspray, shampoos, perfume, mascara and lipstick; printing inks and paints; pharmaceutical tablets; and agricultural fertilizer (slow-release coating for urea)

In foods, shellac is most commonly used as a coating or glaze on confections, chewing gum, fruit, and coffee beans. Lac dye, (another insect product) may be used as coloring in foods and beverages.

What Foods Contain Shellac

As a general rule, any hard-coated, shiny candy contains a shellac coating or glaze (M&Ms™ is one exception.) Shellac may appear on the label under different names. The two most common ones in use today are “resinous glaze” or “confectioner’s glaze.” In general, all Easter candy (eggs and jelly beans) are coated. Halloween candy (candy corn) is as well.

Other Confections Containing Shellac:

• Hershey’s Whopper’s Malted Milk Balls™
• Hershey’s Milk Duds™
• Nestle’s Raisinettes™
• Nestle’s Goober’s™
• Tootsie Roll Industry’s Junior Mints™ (NOT Tootsie Rolls)
• Tootsie Roll Industry’s Sugar Babies™
• Jelly Belly™ jelly beans, mint crèmes
• Godiva’s™ Dark Chocolate Almond Bar; Dark Chocolate Cherries; Milk Chocolate Cashews; White Chocolate Pearls; Milk Chocolate Pearls.
• Gertrude Hawk’s™ chocolate-covered nuts and raisins; cupcake sprinkles; decorative cake pieces
• Russell Stover’s™ jelly beans; NOT in their chocolate-covered cherries or mint patties
• Skittles™ and Starburst™: no shellac, but they do contain gelatin (an animal-derived ingredient)

Shellac Has Many Other Uses

Shellac, is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish. Shellac functions as a tough all-natural primer, sanding sealant, tannin-blocker, odour-blocker, stain, and high-gloss varnish. Shellac was once used in electrical applications as it possesses good insulation qualities and it seals out moisture.

Shellac is often the only historically appropriate finish for early 20th-century hardwood floors, and wooden wall and ceiling paneling.

It was also often used on kitchen cabinets and hardwood floors, prior to the advent of polyurethane.

Shellac was used from mid-19th century to produce small moulded goods like picture frames, boxes, toilet articles, jewelry, inkwells and even dentures. In dental technology, it is still occasionally used in the production of custom impression trays and denture production.

Shellac is used by many cyclists as a protective and decorative coating for their handlebar tape.

Orange shellac is also the preferred adhesive for reattaching ink sacs when restoring vintage fountain pens. It has always been the preferred hot-melt adhesive for fixing leather saxophone pads into their metal key-cups.

Sheets of Braille were coated with shellac to help protect them from wear due to being read by hand.

Shellac was historically used as a protective coating on paintings.

Because of its alkaline properties, shellac-coated pills may be used for a timed enteric or colonic release. It is also used to replace the natural wax of the apple, which is removed during the cleaning process.

Eating Bugs Is Good For You…

It takes about 100,000 lac bugs to make 500 g of shellac flakes. This means that every time you eat those sweet candies you are really consuming parts from thousands of beetles.

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