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The bones are bleached in the sun and sold to marketers who then sell them to the U.S. sugar industry. Sugar companies then heat the bones until charred, at which point they are used to filter the sugar that keeps you fat and happy.

We don’t know by what alchemy this method purifies the sugar, but since they go out of their way to use ground-up cow bones from India—a country where that animal is often considered sacred—we have to assume Satan is involved.

3. CARMINE

Carmine can also be identified on food labels as crimson lake, cochineal, Natural Red 4, CI 75470, or E120. We mention that because we’re guessing you’ll want to check for it after reading this.

If you’re eating something red right now, or have recently, you’re probably eating carmine, which is ground-up cochineal insects—essentially mashed red beetles. Because you’re dying to know more, the insects are killed by exposure to heat or immersion in hot water and then dried. Because the female abdominal region that houses the fertilized eggs contains the most carmine, it is separated from the rest of the body, ground into a powder, and cooked at high temperatures to extract the maximum amount of color.

Then it’s added to that yogurt you ate this morning while lording your health consciousness over the guy in the cubicle next to you who had an Egg McMuffin.

Food manufacturers are well aware that word has gotten out about exactly what carmine is and that people are less than crazy about it. So a number of crafty manufacturers have resorted to labeling it not as carmine but instead as “natural color,” thereby guaranteeing you’ll never really know for sure if your cherry ice cream contains the USDA recommended amount of creepy crawlers.

Hey, speaking of that . . .

2. NATURAL FLAVOR

When it comes to food, most of us get nervous when people are intentionally vague. We steer clear of the street vendor selling “meat soup” and “food burritos.”

So when you see that a label has included “natural flavor,” you should be equally alarmed. If you’re thinking the natural flavor in your orange candy must have come from oranges, think again. If it was from oranges, they would say so right on the can. It would be a selling point.

The problem is, natural flavor can be anything that isn’t man-made. Cat urine could be a natural flavor. If someone discovered that goat jizz added a special zing to ice cream and they could prove that eating it wouldn’t make you sick: natural flavor. And because they know people would rather see the word natural on the label than some fancy-pants chemical compound, it’s actually in their interest to go with the goat jizz.

One potentially disturbing example of natural flavor gone bad comes from—where else?—McDonald’s. Back in 1990, amid constant public outcry about the amount of cholesterol in its french fries, McDonald’s started using pure vegetable oil in its fryers.

Wait, what were they using before? Why, beef lard. When they stopped using it, and McDonald’s realized that fried potatoes don’t taste as good without some molten beef added, it was “natural flavor” to the rescue.

When vegetarian groups demanded to know what the mystery flavor was, company reps would only say it was “animal derived.”

They wouldn’t say what animal. According to the book Fast Food Nation, “Beef is the probable source, although other meats cannot be ruled out. In France, for example, fries are sometimes cooked in duck fat or horse tallow.” Now, we all know how uptight French people are about their food. If their fries are being boiled in the processed knee joints of Kentucky Derby hopefuls, what does that mean for us Americans? Use your imagination.

1. BACTERIOPHAGES

In 2006, the FDA approved the use of bacteriophages to fight Listeria microbes on lunch meat, wieners, and sausages. If you’re unfamiliar with the term bacteriophages, let us put it in a layman’s term for you: viruses.

In this case, six viruses, to be exact. There is an excellent