After years of hearing information from family, the media, etc, we manage to pass most of our lives without knowing the actual origin of some products that we eat every day. Here is a myth you might still believe and the actual fact.
FACTS: VANILLA IS ONE OF THE FEW ORCHIDS WHO PRODUCES FRUIT
Vanilla is an orchid and one of the few that produces fruit. The flower blooms for 24 hours and must be pollinated or it dies. It is indigenous to southeastern Mexico. Vanilla is extracted from the cured pods (beans) of the orchid flowers. When the beans are harvested, they are treated with hot water or heat and are then placed in the sun every day for weeks to months until they have shrunk to 20% of their original size.
Vanilla is the only edible fruit of the orchid family, the largest family of flowering plants in the world. There are over 150 varieties of vanilla plants. The dairy industry uses a huge percentage of the world’s vanilla in ice creams, yogurts, and other flavoured dairy products.
MYTH: There’s beaver butt secretions in your vanilla ice cream.
You’ve probably heard that a secretion called castoreum, isolated from the anal gland of a beaver, is used in flavourings and perfumes. But castoreum is so expensive, at up to $70 per pound of anal gland (the cost to humanely milk castoreum from a beaver is likely even higher), that it’s unlikely to show up in anything you eat.
In 2011, the Vegetarian Resource Group wrote to five major companies that produce vanilla flavouring and asked if they use castoreum. The answer: According to the Federal Code of Regulations, they can’t. (The FDA highly regulates what goes into vanilla flavouring and extracts.)
It’s equally unlikely you’ll find castoreum in mass-marketed goods, either.
Eat Up the Past 