The use of castoreum as a flavoring in food has reduced over the years and it is instead used in perfumes.Synthetic:Ī synthetic version of vanillin – the organic compound contained in vanilla beans, that gives vanilla extract its flavour – is now utilized more often than the natural extract.Īrtificial vanillin is manufactured either from guaiacol – an aromatic oil usually derived from guaiacum or wood creosote – or lignin, found in the bark. The transition to vanillin also comes due to the high costs of extracting the Castoreum compound from the animals. The shift to this new formula is because of the fact that beaver populations started dwindling. Not only is Castoreum now seldom used in food products as a vanilla flavoring, the new flavors of this well-appreciated spice are now made with a substance called vanillin. That being said, read your ingredients and always buy organic! Vanillin: Castoreum is still utilized in some candles and perfume products, but almost never in food and drink. Don’t Freak Out:ĭon’t go and throw your Vanilla flavouring in the trash because you have almost certainly never ingested any because it is now difficult to obtain in sizeable quantities. Manufacturers have been using it for food because vanilla flavoring is also a relatively cheaper alternative to vanilla extract which is supposed to be quite expensive. The US FDA has listed Castoreum as a “generally regarded as safe” additive and it has also been used in perfumes and foods in the past 80 years approximately which was documented in a 2007 study in the International Journal of Toxicology. The Castoreum can also be “milked” from anesthetized beavers and used as a flavoring or scent perfumes and food why it has been incorporated in vanilla flavoring. This unique diet of beavers lends a pleasant smell to this compound, which Beavers use to mark their territory. The brown goo-like substance has a musky, vanilla-like scent, because of beavers’ diet (they eat bark and leaves).
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Due to its proximity to anal glands, Castoreum is a mixture of several excretions including the beaver’s urine and scat which are located between the pelvis and the base of the tail which is right next to the anal glands. This chemical compound is used by beavers to mark their territory.
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Vanilla flavouring is created with a few additives, which consists of a component called Castoreum.