Chewing gum is known as one of the foods with the most additives, and one of the substances called lac is actually a secretion of bugs. Although this sounds a bit disgusting, there are quite a few uses of lac!
Young lac worms will flock to trees in search of suitable branches and settle down once found. Among them, the female lac worm can secrete lac and form a rubber shell outside the body, leaving 3 holes in the shell for ventilation and excretion, and it hides in the shell to enjoy the juice of the plant and give birth to the next generation.
Lac worms can be raised for two seasons a year, and harvested one season from April to May and one season from September to October. When harvesting, the branches wrapped in lac are cut off, or manually peeled off, and then washed, removed and purified to obtain lac for different purposes.
Lac is the only animal resin, with insulation, moisture-proof, acid resistance, anti-corrosion, strong adhesion, good color fixing performance, non-toxic and harmless and other advantages, is an important raw material in the fields of chemical, light industry, food, medicine, military, mechanical and electrical fields. The price of lac is more expensive, and it can be sold for tens of thousands of yuan a ton! The top three lac producers in the world are India, Thailand and China. At present, China's lac mainly comes from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, Guangdong and other places, of which Yunnan's lac production accounts for 80% to 90% of the national output.
Lac worms and ants are a good pair of partners, and it can even be said that ants are like the "nannies" of lac worms. Originally, the lac worm will discharge a kind of "honeydew", in the dry season, these "honeydew" sugar content is high, viscosity is large, easy to stick to the lac worm, resulting in lac worm pore blockage, and finally be choked to death. Moreover, under warm and moist conditions, these "honeydews" accumulate on branches and leaves, and they are easily moldy, causing the host plant to become ill and the lac worms to malnourished. At this time, the ants that will eat "honeydew" are simply saving the life of the lac worm.
In addition, studies have found that ants will use their antennae to beat the lac worm, stimulating it to secrete more "honeydew". I don't know whether it is the stress response or the acceleration of metabolism, the lac worms patronized by ants not only secrete more "honeydew", but also secrete more lac.
Back to the chewing gum mentioned at the beginning. In fact, the safety of lac is very good, and it is allowed to be used as a food additive in the International Food Codex and European and American countries. China's national standards stipulate that lac can be used as a coating agent for food and a gum-based substance for chewing gum, and can also be used as a preservative and food colorant for fruits and vegetables.
In the pharmaceutical industry, lac is mainly used for moisture-proof icing of pills and tablets, drug sealing, glazing and enteric coating of sustained-release drugs. In the military field, it can be used for ammunition moisture protection and gunpowder adhesives. In the electronics industry, it can be used for the insulation treatment of electrical components. In the rubber and plastics industry, it can be used to improve product properties and produce materials for special purposes. In addition, lac can also be used for leather and paper glazing, dyeing in the textile industry, etc.