More Health Risks From Cinnamon

Cinnamon contains, by default:

• Beneficial phytochemicals (most notably: cinnamaldehyde)
• Poison (here we are talking about: coumarin)

However! Not all cinnamons are created equal, and of the two main kinds of cinnamon widely available in most of the world…

• One kind has moderate levels of the beneficial phytochemicals and negligible levels of the poison
• The other kind has high levels of the beneficial phytochemicals and very high levels of the poison

Guess which kind is by far the most common on N. American supermarket shelves? If you guessed the second kind, you were right:

Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier?

Please note: if your cinnamon does not specifically claim to be Ceylon cinnamon (not poisonous), it is Cassia cinnamon (poisonous). In countries like the US that do not have stringent regulations around what advertisers can claim, it’s also possible they will simply label regular cinnamon as “sweet cinnamon” on the strength of it being adjectivally describable as sweet (plausible deniability) and/or the fact that they added sugar or some other sweetener to it (in which case they’ve gone beyond merely taking liberties, and are now taking the p—).

You can read more about the distinctions between these two kinds of cinnamon, here: A Tale Of Two Cinnamons

PS: if you’re wondering “how poisonous can it be if it’s readily available on supermarket shelves; isn’t this hyperbole?” then we direct your attention to the alcohol aisle or perhaps the tobacco kiosk. Stores will sell what they can get away with selling.

It gets worse

Cinnamon samples were studied from 104 commercially-available sources, and the following problems were found:

About coumarin content specifically: 29.8% of samples posed health risks to children under 10 in just one teaspoonful, and given that the recommended safe amount is 0.1mg/kg, so even an adult could easily go over this with a couple of teaspoons of cassia cinnamon.

Of the 104 sources tested…

• 10 had lead content exceeding industry-acceptable safety levels
• 13 contained levels coumarin beyond acceptable limits
• 13 had elevated sulfur levels, meaning likely dangerous levels of sulfites.
• 15 contained high levels of aluminum (up to 2g/kg, meaning the maximum safe amount of this cinnamon is about ¼ of a teaspoon).
• 19 had high chromium levels (up to 20mg/kg), which is unregulated even in the EU, but known to be dangerous.

About outright mislabelling:

• 9% of “Ceylon” cinnamon samples were actually Cassia.
• 11.4% showed signs of root adulteration (e.g. camphor, aluminum, silicon, titanium).
• DNA tests found undeclared species like rice, onion, fenugreek, and mustard in some products.

Only 33.7% were free from fraud, safety, or quality issues.

You may be thinking: “well, 33.7% certainly isn’t great, but it could be worse”

And, yes it could: those 104 samples were from the EU (famously high regulatory standards). So, if samples from the most safety-regulated place on Earth scored that badly, imagine what it might be like in places with less testing and fewer regulations!

You can read the paper in full here: High rate of safety and fraud issues in commercially available cinnamon

Want to learn more?

Check out:

Heavy Metals In Health Foods (And How To Reduce Them)

Take care!