(NaturalNews) Confectioner's glaze, also called pharmaceutical glaze, resinous glaze, pure food glaze and natural glaze, is a common ingredient in candies and pills. By any name, it's the same ingredient as shellac, the chemical sold in hardware stores that's used for sealing and varnishing wood floors. Check the ingredients of any over-the-counter drugs you may own, too: It's a common ingredient in
children's medicines and even some children's frozen foods.
Shellac is actually a chemical secreted by female lac bugs (
Laccifer lacca), a type of "scale insect." They create shellac in order to form sheltering tunnels as they travel along the outside of trees. It is extracted for industrial use by scraping bark, bugs and tunnels off of trees in Asian forests and into canvas tubes. The tubes are then heated over a flame until the shellac melts and seeps out of the canvas, after which it is dried into flakes for sale. Before use in food or as varnish, the shellac must be re-dissolved in denatured alcohol.
The FDA classifies shellac as GRAS, or
Generally Recognize As Safe. Instead, they should probably classify it as "beetle juice!" Shellac is also used in shampoo, lipstick, hairspray, chewing gum and coffee beans. Before vinyl records came along in the 1940's, records were pressed out of shellac. Common candies containing shellac include Hershey's Mild Duds and Skittles (sold in the UK only, as US Skittles do not contain shellac).
Shellac is also used to coat aspirin pills to help prevent stomach irritation.
Source: 25 Amazing Facts About Food, authored by Mike Adams and David Guiterrez. This report reveals surprising things about where your food comes from and what's really in it!
Download the full report (FREE) by clicking here. Inside, you'll learn 24 more amazing but true facts about foods, beverages and food ingredients. Instant download of the complete PDF. All 25 facts are documented and true.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he is well known as the creator of popular downloadable preparedness programs on financial collapse, emergency food storage, wilderness survival and home defense skills. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds.
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Wednesday, August 03, 2011
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