SAN FRANCISCO TEPEYACAC, Mexico (AP) — One family in central Mexico is struggling to preserve the production of cochineal dye, an intense, natural red pigment so prized that, after gold and silver, it ...

Textile art by Porfirio Gutiérrez. The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in January will host Zapotec-American ...

For years, people hungered for the perfect red. The color has a long human history: Mesoamerican scribes used it to record their history, while the Old Testament paints it as the color of sin. In ...

That natural red coloring in your food and makeup might come from a place that may make you cringe: The ground-up bodies of thousands of tiny insects. Thousands of miles from your local grocery store, ...

An average trip to the grocery store can yield a cartful of colorful foods. Bright among the rainbow are the reds, lending hues to products such as raspberry jam, canned cherries, strawberry licorice, ...

Have you ever heard of cochineal? And I am not referring to the upscale restaurant in Marfa, Texas, but to the small, scale insect native to our area. This insect lives on nopal, prickly pear, Opuntia ...