Get this from USA Today.  Starbucks, fully in step with the "all-natural" craze, was using a dye produced from insects to color some of its drinks and food products.  Starbucks chose the bug coloring in a move away from artificial coloring and ingredients.  Then Starbucks execs ran afoul of the vegans.  Protesting vegans have succeeded in making Starbucks go bug-free.

Vegans evidently consider bug-coloring in drinks and food the equivalent of eating a twelve-ounce New York strip steak.  In fact, a vegan "barista" at a Starbucks store leaked the buggy information to a vegan blogger, and before long, much of vegandom was up in arms.  

To pacify vociferous vegans, Starbucks will switch to using "lycopene, a natural, tomato-based extract" to color drinks and food. 

Herein lies an interesting quandary for the "back to nature" crowd, which must include plenty of hemp-clothed and sandal-wearing vegans.  Bugs -- beetles, which the dye was derived from -- are "all-natural" the last time anyone checked. 

Bugs, along with a whole host of critters, are in the diets of peoples across the globe.  Surely a grub- or termite-eating Kalahari bushman wouldn't object to his strawberry frappuccino being nicely colored with beetle dye?  Who are vegans to dictate that all-natural must conform to their herbivore proclivities?

Human beings, starting in their hairy past, have been omnivores.  Primitive humans didn't have the luxury of upscale Americans and their idealistic college-age charges who choose to go vegan.  And if vegans ever leave their gated communities or college campuses to check out the world, they'll find that most people in other cultures are happy for any meal that fills their stomachs.  In most cultures, meat is actually welcome, particularly to those who don't have a boutique green grocer or Whole Foods around the corner. 

Veganism is an outgrowth of Western affluence.  Vegans, in the main, are the pampered privileged who have the time to care how their Frappuccinos are colored.