Episode notes
That cheap jar of cinnamon in your pantry was once worth a fortune. This episode traces the spice from Egyptian embalming and temple incense to ancient Rome, where Pliny the Elder recorded prices equal to 50 months of labor and Nero burned a year's supply at his wife's funeral. We explore the trader myths of winged serpents and cinnamon birds, and how the spice trade helped fuel the Age of Exploration.
We then dig into the botany of coppicing and peeling a paper-thin layer of inner bark into quills, and the crucial difference between true Ceylon cinnamon and cassia. That difference matters for coumarin, a liver-toxic compound regulated by the European Food Safety Authority, and for the confusing clinical research on cinnamon and blood sugar. We also cover counterfeiting and the 2024 lead chromate applesauce recall.
- How Arab traders used myths recorded by Herodotus to protect their monopoly and justify astronomical prices
- Why cinnamon harvesting requires coppicing and immediate peeling while the inner bark is still wet
- How to tell Ceylon from cassia, including the iodine starch test, and why cassia dominates global production
- Coumarin limits for baked goods in Europe and why concentrated supplements carry the real risk
- Why studies on cinnamon for diabetes conflict, and what the 2012 Cochrane Review concluded