Value

2023
UV print on aluminum dibond, engraving on aluminum, water infused with achiote / annatto, sound piece composed with field recordings of Kew Gardens, bag of Cheetos
Dimensions variable

I recently learned that Cheetos are illegal in Germany. ¹ This is because of an obscure copyright law that has banned them in this country. Intersnack Group Gmbh & Co., a large Düsseldorf-based conglomerate that dominates the German snack market, filed an injunction in 1980 to protect their own brand of chip product, spelled “Chito”. ² Intersnack will sue anyone who tries to sell the offending product, but one legal loophole is that if retailers cover the name of the brand with a sticker, they can sometimes get away with selling the foreign food if only at exorbitantly high prices. ³ This information, about an international food product being banned in Germany, became more interesting to me when comparing these restrictions to the fluidity by which one of its ingredients has travelled globally.

Cheetos are known for leaving a powdery, orange dust on the snack eater’s fingers, due to a dye or colourant in the food known as E160b.⁴ In the case of E160b, the colourant is derived from a plant, commonly known as annatto in English or achiote in Spanish. The seeds of annatto are covered in a naturally occurring red-orange aril, which pigments water or fatty substances when dissolved. Specifically, the dye is produced by carotenoid pigments, known as bixin (the red colourant) and norbixin (the yellow colourant) that are found in the arils.

Native to the Caribbean and Central America, specifically Mexico, annatto now grows across tropical regions in these territories, as well as in Africa and Asia.⁵ The plant has many names with these etymologies speaking to a larger set of forces around it, specifically the acts of erasure that were undertaken by colonizers through its so-called discovery. Annatto’s scientific name, Bixa Orellana is named after Francisco de Orellana, the Spanish conquistador most well-known for sailing the length of the Amazon in 1542.⁶ The word bixa, is believed to have possibly originated from Haiti, where it travelled to the Middle Americas and Northern South America in the 16th century. Achiote, the commonly used Spanish word for the plant, originates from theNáhuatl achíotl. The Mayas of Yucatan used the word kuxub.⁷

Annatto’s presence in the global economic industry has been significant since the 17th century, when English cheesemakers began using the colourant to dye their cheese, making it look yellower and creamier, scamming customers into thinking it was of a higher quality. The colour of cheese originates from its fat content, and cheesemakers began skimming the cream off the top to make butter or sell it separately, meaning the cheese would then otherwise naturally appear white.⁸ Colouring cheese yellow became common practice in other places in Europe, including the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

For the United Kingdom, one of the top cheese producers at the time, almost all of its annatto was being imported from plantations in Jamaica. In 1885, only fifty years after slavery was abolished in the colony, over 130 719 kilograms of annatto were harvested from the island, with a value of £3 602, at the time or €692 236.72 in today’s money.⁹

Since then, annatto has become an important commodity globally, still used today as a natural colourant in foods and cosmetics. Capitalism has shifted the way in which we as human beings relate to plants, annatto included. The Mayas used the plant for ceremonial purposes, including for body, hair and face dye, to ward off evil spirits, for luck during hunting, as war paint, and during ceremonial rites of passage.¹⁰ It is also known to have several medicinal properties, which has been recorded in both Maya and Yucatan texts, which speak to using all parts of the plant, including the roots, pulp, and seeds.

Below is an incomplete list of known medicinal uses and remedies, some still used today, as explained in the YouTube video Annatto – Medicinal Uses and Side Effects published by Earth’s Medicine, self-described as “the channel that introduces you to the healing wonders of Mother Earth with a Jamaican flavour!”

1. It is known to be an aphrodisiac, if a tea is made from its young shoots.

2. Dysentery and kidney issues can be treated using an astringent drink made from the pulp surrounding the seeds.

3. Hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, renal insufficiency, constipation, morning sickness, and liver disorders can be treated through consuming a concoction of leaves.

4. For diabetes, the fruit is eaten to improve blood sugar levels.

5. It is used as an expectorant for children, by infusing water with the flower and drinking it.

6. For respiratory issues, a pulp can be made from the pulp of the seed and ingested.

7. For headaches, ground leaves can be mixed with coconut oil and applied to the head.

8. For fever, the shoots from the leaves can be boiled and applied to the head and body.

9. For mouth and throat infections, young shoots can be boiled and used for gargling.

10. For wounds, burns and skin infections,, a tea can be made from the leaves and used to wash the area

Currently, the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew in the United Kingdom holds two samples of Bixa Orellana: One donated by the Centre Regional de Recherche Agronomique based in Mali, the other from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. These seed records, donated respectively in 2003 and 2007, preserve the genetic information needed to propagate the plant as climate change continues to jeopardize food systems. A loss of annatto would directly impact supply chains in economic markets as it is still employed on a mass scale to dye butter, margarine, ice cream, snack foods, cosmetics and many other commodities, including Cheetos.

The site of the seed bank acts a mirror to the colonial botanical garden; its repository is insurance for uncertain ecological future that has been accelerated through capitalism and accumulation; the very same modalities that reinforced the desire to collect, categorize and capture plant knowledge in the space of the botanical garden in the first place.