This is not a joke: there are ground up red beetles being used right now as a food coloring ingredient in yogurt, ice cream, juice drinks and many other grocery products. The ingredient is called “carmine.”

Carmine is literally made from dried, ground-up red beetles, and its coloring (bright red) is used in yogurt, juice drinks, candies, and a long list of other products, including many “natural” products.

It’s not that these red beetles are dangerous. Except for a few individuals who suffer severe allergic reactions to the beetles, most people do just fine eating carmine. Beetles are probably good for you, just like ants. High in protein, low in fat… you get the picture.

But there’s a grossness factor that probably explains why products using this ingredient list “carmine” instead of “powdered red beetles” on the label. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has even petitioned the FDA to ban carmine(1), or, at the very least, require its clear labeling. The CSPI cites a study conducted by the doctors at the University of Michigan (headed by Dr. Baldwin, University of Michigan Medical Center) that demonstrated carmine can cause a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis — a condition that can put a person into shock and require hospitalization. But these reactions are extremely rare.

What if you could find a magic potion that would sweeten your tea, create mind blowing delicious cakes and dramatically improve your health? You may be surprised to find that bees create this amazing elixir in the form of honey. That’s right, raw, unadulterated honey is nature’s oldest sweetener and it also promotes true, radiant health. Thousands of years before the invention of white sugar, people used honey to enhance their food and support their bodies.

But don’t be fooled by the sticky jar that is sitting in your cupboard. Most honey is highly processed, over heated and chemically refined, leaving it lifeless and free of any benefits. Excessive heating destroys the valuable enzymes, vitamins, and minerals, as well as the unique phytonutrients that make honey the super food that it is.

Eventually antibiotics are going to be seen as one of the worst things to ever come out of pharmaceutical science because in the end, they have made us only weaker in the face of ever increasingly strong super bugs that are resistant to all the antibiotics doctors have at their disposal. When we look at how deep the rabbit hole goes with antibiotics, we will get sick in our souls. Antibiotics have fulfilled their anti–biotic anti-life role leaving a long trail of death and suffering in the wake of their use.

Diseases include measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. All were in decline for several decades before the introduction of antibiotics or vaccines – Dr. Lawrence Wilson.

Antibiotics do not kill yeast. Many women find after taking antibiotics, they get vaginal yeast infections (because their normal bacterial balance has been lost). Antibiotics bring on fungal and yeast infections thus will eventually be seen as a major cause of cancer since more and more oncologists are seeing yeast and fungal infections as an integral part of cancer and its cause. With upwards of 40 percent of all cancers thought to be involved with and caused by infections, the subject of antibiotics and the need for something safer, more effective and life serving is imperative.