Vanilla-Flavored Processed Foods May Contain Anal Secretions From Beaver Butts…
Anal secretions from beavers, which beavers use to mark their territory, smell, ironically, like vanilla. These secretions, called castoreum, may be used as vanilla flavoring in baked goods, pudding, chewing gum and more.1Here’s the rub … you certainly won’t see ‘beaver anal secretions’ on your food labels, and you probably won’t see ‘castoreum’ either. All that has to be listed is vanilla natural flavor, because, after all, beaver anal secretions are natural.It’s clearly absurd that food manufacturers can describe secretions from beaver anal glands as natural vanilla flavor. This isn’t a huge health issue, especially because beavers are not a bred animal, and the total consumption of castoreum is thought to be around just 250 pounds a year.
Still, there’s no denying it’s deceptive, as most people would not knowingly buy such a product, especially when vanilla flavor can be extracted from other sources, like coniferous trees and vanilla beans (imagine that!). In case you were wondering, there are actually quite a few foods that could, theoretically, contain castoreum, including:
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Goodness. Think I'll stick with my low carb cakes
ReplyDeleteDoug ( laughing out loud )
i think a lot of people might be surprised where "food additives" can come from. :-) my favorite red coloring comes from a bug -- carmine. it's been safely used for centuries, if not millennia.
ReplyDeleteAnimal's gland content is widely used in a perfume industry, so in my mind there is nothing wrong with a flavoring extracted from a beaver. I always find squeamishness funny, like vegetarians like to talk about eggs being chicken way to menstruate trying to scare others into veganism , or some people claim they can't eat chicken feet or a fish head because it actually looks like an animal part. I mostly object flour and sugar being parts of a vanilla cake, where did they get their vanilla-smelling substance is way less relevant.
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