I went shopping in a new store today. At first I was excited to find something with 100% juice that wasn’t absurdly expensive. But then I looked at the ingredients and saw cochineal extract, AKA carmine, AKA crushes beetles used to make things red.
I just don’t understand. You’ve got this juice, you could totally add beet juice for coloring and achieve a beautiful color. But no, gotta throw insects into it instead. As far as hidden non-vegan ingredients go, stuff from insects tends to fly under the radar. Yet I bet if more people were aware of what they were buying, even non-vegans would take issue with it.
From the company’s point of view, this is not a lie. They’re following a legal definition that tells them what they can call their product. The law defines what 100% means, and a product falling under this definition can’t legally use e.g. names for diluted juice products, in the same way that it couldn’t be sold as milk.