Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier?

Our Verdict

When comparing sweet cinnamon to regular cinnamon, we picked the sweet.

Why?

In this case, it’s not close. One of them is health-giving and the other is poisonous (but still widely sold in supermarkets, especially in the US and Canada, because it is cheaper).

It’s worth noting that “regular cinnamon” is a bit of a misnomer, since sweet cinnamon is also called “true cinnamon”. The other cinnamon’s name is formally “cassia cinnamon”, but marketers don’t tend to call it that, preferring to calling it simply “cinnamon” and hope consumers won’t ask questions about what kind, because it’s cheaper.

Note: this too is especially true in the US and Canada, where for whatever reason sweet cinnamon seems to be more difficult to obtain than in the rest of the world.

In short, both cinnamons contain cinnamaldehyde and coumarin, but:

• Sweet/True cinnamon contains only trace amounts of coumarin
• Regular/Cassia cinnamon contains about 250x more coumarin

Coumarin is heptatotoxic, meaning it poisons the liver, and the recommended safe amount is 0.1mg/kg, so it’s easy to go over that with just a couple of teaspoons of cassia cinnamon.

You might be wondering: how can they get away with selling something that poisons the liver? In which case, see also: the alcohol aisle. Selling toxic things is very common; it just gets normalized a lot.

Cinnamaldehyde is responsible for cinnamon’s healthier properties, and is found in reasonable amounts in both cinnamons. There is about 50% more of it in the regular/cassia than in the sweet/true, but that doesn’t come close to offsetting the potential harm of its higher coumarin content.

Want to learn more?

You may like to read:

• A Tale Of Two Cinnamons ← this one has more of the science of coumarin toxicity, as well as discussing (and evidencing) cinnamaldehyde’s many healthful properties against inflammation, cancer, heart disease, neurodegeneration, etc

Enjoy!