Surely, something you use to coat and protect wood can’t be put on jelly beans. Oh, but it can. Natural shellac, when it comes right down to it, is edible. No, I do not mean you should dip a finger into a can of shellac from the hardware store and give it a taste test. The shellac we use on wood doesn’t really bear much resemblance to shellac used on food as the former may use solvents that are toxic or contain other chemicals and colorants. The shellac used to coat jelly beans and make them smooth and shiny is also called ‘confectioner’s glaze.’ This is how you’ll find it on the ingredient list.
Shellac
Shellac is actually a resinous material or ‘sticklac’ secreted by a bug called the Kerria lacca or Indian ‘lac’ insect. In the food industry, it also called confectioner’s glaze, pure food glaze, natural glaze, or confectioner’s resin. In the pharmaceutical industry it is called pharmaceutical glaze.
Native to Southeast Asia and Mexico and found in India and Thailand, these insects are part of the family Kerriidae or lac insets. They feed on trees and secrete a sticky, waxy substance. This natural polymer can be collected, cleaned, and dried before being mixed with a solvent like alcohol to make usable shellacs. It takes about 150,000 insects to make one pound of the substance or about 300,000 to make one kilogram. You may find other names for these insects, such as Coccus lacca, and Laccifer lacca.
These insects have a fascinating life cycle. Immature females are called ‘crawlers.’ According to food scientist Joe Schwarz, their first job in life is to crawl around and look for a sap-producing plant to feed on. Once they find one, they crawl onto a branch and insert their pointy mouthparts into it to start feeding on the sap. Once this begins, they lose their legs! They become permanently attached to the spot for the rest of their lives. All they do is feed, secrete sap (and dyes) and lay eggs.
The males are mobile but, unlike the females, they cannot actually eat. Their lives are very short and spent in pursuit of female eggs to fertilize before they die. This is pretty much all they have time to do before they kick the bucket.
As the females eat the sac, they change some of it into the resinous material that becomes shellac. This ‘lac’ covers their body and eventually hardens to become a protective shell over the insect’s body and her eggs as well as the area of the branch the female lives on. It is in this manner she spends her life.
If enough insects infest one branch, the entire branch can be covered in secretion. It is possible for over 150 lac insects to live on one square inch of a branch.
Shellac has been used for many different things besides coating wood. It was used to make the first phonographs, for example, and was a primary ingredient in the first hairy sprays. It’s used in shampoos, lipsticks, perfume, mascara, printing inks, and paints. It may be used to coat medicinal tablets. Since it is insoluble in stomach acid, this helps tablets and capsules pass through the stomach before the contents are released. Shellac is also used to coat aluminum foil and paper. And of course, it’s used in furniture and floor finishes.
In the food industry, shellac, or confectioner’s glaze, is used on candy like jelly beans, candy corn, gum, ice cream cones. It’s insoluble in water so it helps keep products from drying out or getting wet. Fruits like oranges and avocados are sometimes coated with shellac for similar reasons, and it’s also used on coffee beans. 1,2
While eating the secretions from a bug may seem gross, it’s not unusual. After all, we eat honey, which is secreted by bees. And, we get the food coloring Cochineal extract, or carmine, from dried female insects Dactylopius coccus costa, another lac insect. Lac or shellac is the only commercial resin of animal origin, however.
Shellac used on foods is considered safe to eat and has not been linked to any adverse reactions. It’s made up of the same type of stuff that is found in other foods: Hydroxy fatty acids, esters, etc. As a rule of thumb, expect it to be used on any hard-coated candy. M&Ms however, are not coated with shellac. According to the Vegetarian Resource Group Blog, the following candies use shellac:
- Hershey’s Whopper’s Malted Milk Balls™
- Hershey’s Milk Duds™
- Nestle’s Raisinettes™
- Nestle’s Goober’s™
- Tootsie Roll Industry’s Junior Mints™
- Tootsie Roll Industry’s Sugar Babies™
- Jelly Belly™ jelly beans and mint crèmes
- Godiva’s™ Dark Chocolate Almond Bar
- Godiva’s Dark Chocolate Cherries
- Godiva’s Milk Chocolate Cashews
- Godiva’s White Chocolate Pearls
- Godiva’s Milk Chocolate Pearls
- Russell Stover’s™ jelly beans
Note that while some Tootsie Roll products use shellac, actual tootsie rolls do not. Also, contrary to what we might expect, Skittles and Starburst candies do not use shellac, but Starburst Jelly Beans do. 3
Here are some other candies that use confectioner’s glaze or shellac, according to my own ingredient search:
- Brach’s Jelly Beans
- Mike and Ike Candy
- Good & Plenty
- Hot Tamales
- Boston Baked Beans
- Lemonhead Candy
- Red Hots Candy
- Starburst Jelly Beans
- Willy Wonka Gobstoppers
- Willy Wonka Runts
- Willy Wonka Nerds
There are many controversies related to the use of lac bugs in producing shellac including the presence of insect parts in the finished product, the death of the insects, and the exploitation of workers on shellac plantations. This article is not meant to comment on the ethical considerations of using shellac but as an explanation as to its use on foods only.
Of special concern may be the presence of leftover insect parts in shellac used on food. Some outraged sources report that up to 25 percent of shellac consists of insect debris. However, this is unprocessed shellac, not food-grade shellac. For food, the shellac is liquified with a solvent and filtered to remove debris and insect parts. While the FDA allows a minimum amount of insect debris in certain food products, it is nowhere near 25 percent and food-grade shellac should be considered to contain almost no insect debris, or at least, to contain no more than a typical spice, herb, etc. While you are eating the secretion of a bug, you are eating, if any at all, a minimal amount of actual bugs. On the other hand, cultures throughout the world eat insects as a matter of course. It’s not nearly as disgusting as you think.
As for my personal opinion, it cannot escape my notice that often, the groups and sources expressing outrage over the use of ‘insect secretions’ by the food industry, not only for reasons of general disgust or non-vegan ingredients, but to protest the killing of millions of insects, do not seem to hold the wood finishing industry and all the other industries that use shellac to the same standards. As I have always found, much of the outrage is as emotional as it is logical. It is hard, even for dedicated activists, to separate their innate feelings of ‘ickiness’ from their moral outrage.
- SCHWARCZ, JOE. LET THEM EAT FLAX!: 70 All-New Commentaries on the Science of Everyday Food & Life. READHOWYOUWANT COM LTD, 2012.
- Deutsch, Jonathan, and Natalya Murakhver. They Eat That?: a Cultural Encyclopedia of Weird and Exotic Food from around the World. ABC-CLIO, 2012.
- Yacoubou, Jeanne. “The Vegetarian Resource Group Blog.” The VRG Blog RSS, 30 Nov. 2010, www.vrg.org/blog/2010/11/30/q-a-on-shellac/. https://www.vrg.org/blog/2010/11/30/q-a-on-shellac/