What does a beavers butt have to do with raspberries, strawberries and vanilla? Find out next
The next time you grab you naturally flavored beverage, candy or other edibles you might want to know where these so called natural flavorings come from.
Flavors including raspberry, vanilla and strawberry may come from a extract called Castoreum. Castoreum is extracted from the castor sacs of the North American and European Beaver. Yes, this means that you may be drinking or eating products that was flavored with glands from the south end of a beaver.
Now that's good beaver butt.
In the United States, the FDA lists castoreum as a generally recognized safe food additive (GRAS) and in 1965 added castoreum extract and castoreum liquid to their program.
So now you are probably wondering what exact products contain Castoreum extract?
Well it's not so easy to find this information, as you can imagine, you might lose a few customers if you admitted the secret sauce was made from the rear end of a rodent.
However on befoodsmart.com it states that Castoreum is "Found in a variety of foods including: alcoholic beverages, baked goods, frozen dairy, chewing gum, candy, beverages, meat products, pudding, gelatin, ice cream, vanilla flavoring, raspberry flavored food"
Woah! So could there be a potential that this product could be in otherwise vegan products? Since the word castoreum isn't listed on the label, it seems there's a potential that some vegans and vegetarians may be consuming beaver secretions in products they may have otherwise thought had no animal products.
But what is more likely is that in this advanced age most flavorings likely come from concoctions made in a lab and not from animal parts. While there is no proof either way, the use of castoreum in your foods is probably not much of a threat as it was say 30 years ago.
Castoreum is also used as a perfumes that have a new car leathery smell, and has been used to enhance the flavor and odor of cigarettes.
