Amazing Fact About Confectioner’s glaze

“Confectioner’s glaze”—a common coating on candies and pills—is made from the bodily excretions of an Asian beetle.

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 that they sell in hardware stores and that is used for sealing and varnishing wood floors (and used to be used in electronics).

Shellac is actually a chemical secreted by female lac bugs (Laccifer lacca), a type of “scale insect,” 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.

Instead of shellac, some food producers use a corn protein called zein.