Carmine

Carmine is a red pigment made from cochineal insects. Cochineal extract is the broader preparation and carmine is the refined form of the same thing. It has coloured food, fabric and cosmetics for centuries, and it produces a red that is difficult to match with alternatives, which is why it is still in use.

It appears in yoghurts, sweets, drinks, sausages and a great deal of cosmetics, particularly lipsticks and blushers, where it shows up under the colour index name CI 75470.

Why it has to be named

This is the interesting part, and it is a small case study in how labelling rules get made.

Colour additives can often be declared collectively. Carmine cannot. Under 21 CFR 73.100, food products containing cochineal extract or carmine must specifically declare the presence of the additive by its common or usual name, “cochineal extract” or “carmine”, in the statement of ingredients.

That requirement exists because allergic reactions to carmine were documented, and a rule requiring the name means people who react to it can identify it. Carmine is not one of the nine major US allergens, so it carries no “Contains” statement and gets no emphasis in the EU system either. The name in the list is the whole of the protection, which is exactly why the name is mandatory.

If you have reacted to a red food or cosmetic and never worked out why, this is a reasonable thing to raise with a clinician.

The other reason people look for it

It is made from insects.

That matters for vegans and for many vegetarians, and it is a common question for halal and kosher observance, where rulings vary and are a matter for your own authority rather than for us. None of that is a safety question, but it is a real reason to want to know, and it is the sort of thing a person reasonably expects an ingredient scanner to catch.

Products often signal this indirectly. A red product marketed as vegan will typically use beetroot, lycopene or a synthetic red instead. But “natural colour” on the front of a package tells you nothing, since carmine is about as natural as a colour gets, which is a small demonstration that “natural” is not a synonym for anything you actually care about.

Spotting it

On food: carmine, cochineal extract, E120, carminic acid, Natural Red 4.

On cosmetics: CI 75470, and sometimes carmine directly.

The cosmetic name is the one people miss, because a colour index number looks like every other colour index number on the label.

Is it safe

For most people, yes, and the honest framing is the same as for any additive: it is approved for use, the amounts involved are small, and the specific concern that drove the labelling rule is an allergic reaction in a minority rather than a general toxicity question. That is a different shape of risk from the one people usually imagine when they hear that a food colour is made from insects, and the difference is worth holding onto. The reasoning behind that distinction is in hazard versus exposure.