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...(Read Full Post)