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How Cinnamon Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry So it's Stuff you
0:16
Speaker 1: should Know the never ending year. Man, I am sleepy today.
0:25
Speaker 1: I do a little whiskey last night. Oh that will
0:27
Speaker 1: make you sleepy. Really nice bourbon. Ok I can't remember
0:31
Speaker 1: the name of it, but you know, one of those
0:34
Speaker 1: small batches. It's I wish I could because the bourbon
0:38
Speaker 1: and not right. I'd love to plug it. And it
0:39
Speaker 1: was bourbon. It was delicious, Okay, cool, so very smooth.
0:42
Speaker 1: Let me let you in on a little, little little
0:44
Speaker 1: known fact you've told me, but tell everyone else about. Yeah,
0:48
Speaker 1: it's a big deal, man. I think we need to
0:50
Speaker 1: spread the word. So you know, all those little small
0:53
Speaker 1: batch distilleries that make rye, and they all have these
0:56
Speaker 1: crazy back stories and all that stuff all almost across
1:01
Speaker 1: the board lies most of the small batch rye and
1:07
Speaker 1: sold in the United States by craft distilleries is made
1:11
Speaker 1: in a single factory in Indiana. Josh is using a
1:14
Speaker 1: lot of air quotes then, including on Indiana, which I
1:17
Speaker 1: didn't quite get. And then they sell it to these
1:20
Speaker 1: people who like put a new label on it, mark
1:22
Speaker 1: the price whatever they want, even though it's the same
1:25
Speaker 1: thing you're drinking, whether it's this craft distillery, that Crestility,
1:29
Speaker 1: it's literally the same rye. Put a folksy backstory on
1:33
Speaker 1: and then you're a chump for buying it. That's that's
1:36
Speaker 1: not truth, bourbon, it's just this rye. But a good
1:39
Speaker 1: giveaway is is the ry you're drinking five year old
1:44
Speaker 1: rye and the distillery has only been around since last year.
1:47
Speaker 1: Probably a pretty good bet that they bought and rebottled it.
1:51
Speaker 1: And that is a true Josh fact. Not like the
1:54
Speaker 1: cigars are supposed to be inhaled when that's yes, that's
1:59
Speaker 1: it's tobacco. What do you think you do with tobacco?
2:03
Speaker 1: Cigar writers right in? Yeah, man, I will forever stand
2:07
Speaker 1: behind You're supposed to inhale cigars. All right, all right?
2:11
Speaker 1: I mean you're just puffing your mouthful of smoke for
2:14
Speaker 1: no reason. Why Why would you do that? What's the
2:18
Speaker 1: point of that? I don't know? Man. Well, okay, so
2:21
Speaker 1: not only can you do you have to write in
2:23
Speaker 1: and say yes, you're you're just supposed to puff on
2:27
Speaker 1: a cigar, not inhale. You have to explain them what
2:29
Speaker 1: the point of a cigar is. You know, you can
2:31
Speaker 1: read up on this. It's pretty easy. That's fine. Okay.
2:34
Speaker 1: I don't need to breathe them. I know that. I'm right. Okay, okay,
2:38
Speaker 1: So you sit in your flooded yard and inhale cigars
2:40
Speaker 1: all day long. It's right. We should just have an
2:43
Speaker 1: episode where we do this and just shoot the breeze.
2:49
Speaker 1: I think this is called arguing, not shooting the breeze.
2:52
Speaker 1: Shooting the breeze is talking about football scores and the
2:54
Speaker 1: weather and all that stuff. We could argue about football scores.
2:58
Speaker 1: There is a did the Falcon win or did they lose? Dude?
3:01
Speaker 1: They lost to the Browns. Yeah, they played the Browns,
3:04
Speaker 1: but it was a close gaming for a while, right.
3:07
Speaker 1: It was a heartbreaker. The terrible, terrible, terrible team. I
3:10
Speaker 1: hate them. See, that's shooting the breeze. Right, So you
3:14
Speaker 1: mentioned cigars, which actually provides a segway. So let's walk
3:17
Speaker 1: it back to it. Okay, there's actually if you think
3:20
Speaker 1: of cinnamon, which is what we're talking about today. Yeah,
3:23
Speaker 1: one of our commodity podcasts. Yeah, which is the original
3:26
Speaker 1: name for the house stuff works TV show. Yeah, little known,
3:30
Speaker 1: little known fact. Um. But if you think cinnamon, you
3:34
Speaker 1: think of like, you know, you go up to the
3:35
Speaker 1: grocery store and you pick up like that metal cannam
3:38
Speaker 1: ac cormicks and you shake it and it makes that
3:40
Speaker 1: nice hollow tinny sounds. Yeah, okay or yeah. I guess
3:44
Speaker 1: you can think of ground cinnamon too. I forgot about
3:47
Speaker 1: that stuff. But when you think cinnamon sticks, that's what
3:50
Speaker 1: you think of, right, And you pop the top open
3:53
Speaker 1: and you shake a couple out and you look at
3:55
Speaker 1: them and it's like a it looks like a little stick,
3:58
Speaker 1: and if you look really closely, like curled, right, and
4:01
Speaker 1: then like you um, put it back in the can
4:04
Speaker 1: and put it back on the store shelves and wipe
4:05
Speaker 1: your hands and go walk away. But what you would
4:10
Speaker 1: probably be surprised, I find, would be if you dumped
4:12
Speaker 1: one of those out into your hand and it looked
4:14
Speaker 1: kind of like a cigar, like rather than hollow and curled.
4:17
Speaker 1: When you're looking down the barrel, it looks stuffed like
4:20
Speaker 1: a cigar. But if you did see that, what you
4:23
Speaker 1: would have just come across is clon cinnamon, also and
4:26
Speaker 1: appropriately known as true cinnamon. Yeah, also known as tree
4:32
Speaker 1: bark yeah, which to me is the fact of the podcast.
4:36
Speaker 1: I had no idea that cinnamon was tree bark. Yeah,
4:41
Speaker 1: But think about it now that you know that, When
4:43
Speaker 1: you think about what cinnamon sticks look like, it makes sense.
4:46
Speaker 1: It looks like curl up tree bark, which is exactly
4:48
Speaker 1: what it is. Man. We could quit now and people
4:51
Speaker 1: have gotten their zero dollars worth. I know, I know,
4:55
Speaker 1: it's like lightning in their headphones. But we won't because
5:00
Speaker 1: we're gonna tell you more than you ever needed to
5:02
Speaker 1: know about cinnamon. Obviously. The stick form is how you
5:05
Speaker 1: can buy it. Also, buy the powdered form and sprinkle
5:08
Speaker 1: it on some bread with some butter and sugar. Yes,
5:13
Speaker 1: salmon toast delicious. If you have an orchid that you've
5:16
Speaker 1: ever over watered um, you want to take some scissors
5:20
Speaker 1: and trim off any rotted roots and then dab them
5:24
Speaker 1: in cinnamon and it staves off any infection. I just
5:27
Speaker 1: recently brought an orchid back using cinnamon as an anti
5:31
Speaker 1: microbial or fungal. I guess Emily has made an all
5:35
Speaker 1: natural flea uh preventative, preventive, preventative preventative for our dogs.
5:41
Speaker 1: It's Uh, it's got cinnamon oil, essential oil, and some
5:44
Speaker 1: other I think eucalyptus and maybe camp for And then
5:51
Speaker 1: you know something that's all distilled or not distill but
5:53
Speaker 1: mixed with olive oil and water and uh it's like
5:57
Speaker 1: all natural. We splayed on a spread on a little
5:59
Speaker 1: bandana and tying around next. Nice. Um. It's also a
6:01
Speaker 1: proven mosquito repelling and killer of mosquito larva and natural pesticide. Right.
6:09
Speaker 1: Plus it's a dynamite name for a pet. Cinnamon, it's
6:15
Speaker 1: pretty much got at all. That's pretty good. Again, we
6:17
Speaker 1: could stop here, but we won't. Uh. So cinnamon the
6:22
Speaker 1: commodity spice. It has a pretty long history actually, Um,
6:28
Speaker 1: I read that it first pops up in writing in
6:35
Speaker 1: b C C b C b C. Yeah, that's a
6:39
Speaker 1: long time ago, in a Chinese text about botanical medicines. Yeah,
6:43
Speaker 1: that makes sense because of all the things we just
6:46
Speaker 1: mentioned you can do with it. Yeah, and then Moses
6:49
Speaker 1: was messing around with it in the Old Testament. Yeah,
6:51
Speaker 1: he used it in his anointing oil, his uh Moses
6:54
Speaker 1: brand anointing oil right that he got rich off of.
6:57
Speaker 1: And uh, Egyptians supposedly used it for embalming. For so,
7:03
Speaker 1: I looked that up because it stica was kind of
7:05
Speaker 1: like in the weird and um, I think they used
7:09
Speaker 1: it to mask the smell of embalming during embalmment. It
7:12
Speaker 1: makes a little more sense. Well, that's used in embalming,
7:14
Speaker 1: I guess just as but not as the agent embalming agent, right,
7:18
Speaker 1: but it may have been part of the embalming agent. Okay, Well,
7:22
Speaker 1: they definitely used it to when they would burn, uh
7:26
Speaker 1: with funeral pires when they had burned bodies, they would
7:28
Speaker 1: use cinnamon because it's so aromatic and pungent and dead
7:31
Speaker 1: burning bodies are stinky, right, But it was also extraordinarily expensive.
7:35
Speaker 1: Apparently Pliny mentioned that, um at is there any other uh?
7:42
Speaker 1: He mentioned that at some point the cost of cinnamon
7:46
Speaker 1: a pound, the equivalent of a pound of cinnamon would
7:49
Speaker 1: have been ten months wages for the average Roman. Um
7:53
Speaker 1: So they I mean they used it, but they used
7:55
Speaker 1: it fairly sparingly, which is to say, um Nero burn
8:00
Speaker 1: Euro who didn't fiddle while Rome burned? By the way, No, no, uh,
8:05
Speaker 1: he burned apparently like a year's supply worth when on
8:08
Speaker 1: his wife's funeral. Higher just basically basically show off, I
8:12
Speaker 1: would guess. Yeah, I was thinking that while I was
8:14
Speaker 1: reading this about how I thought it was kind of
8:16
Speaker 1: funny how spices used to be so like the trade
8:19
Speaker 1: and so expensive, and then when I go to the store,
8:23
Speaker 1: it was like, spices are still kind of expensive some
8:25
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, ten months wages worth it. No, but
8:28
Speaker 1: it's not a lot of slavery associated with it. No.
8:31
Speaker 1: But if you're paying like I guess it's because of
8:33
Speaker 1: the size of the thing you're paying, like sometimes like
8:35
Speaker 1: six dollars for a little no, I know what you mean,
8:37
Speaker 1: a little tiny jar of it, or what's the like
8:41
Speaker 1: compared to affron Man super expensive it is, although Trader
8:45
Speaker 1: Joe's has some for a reasonable price. Yeah, they have
8:48
Speaker 1: a little uh a little mini fistful, a baby's fistful.
8:52
Speaker 1: I think it's the the unit of measurement on the
8:54
Speaker 1: bottle for like six bucks, that's super cheaper. And I
8:59
Speaker 1: think one of the since spices are still kind of pricey,
9:02
Speaker 1: as many of them, including cinnamon, are still uh not mechanized,
9:06
Speaker 1: are still very labor intensive the harvest. Well, the reason
9:09
Speaker 1: cinnamon came down in price because even even still even
9:13
Speaker 1: I think there was one of the Roman emperors decreed
9:17
Speaker 1: he set maximum prices for the whole Roman Empire, and
9:20
Speaker 1: at the time that basically meant for the whole world, right, um.
9:25
Speaker 1: And he set the price at about half or a
9:28
Speaker 1: third of what playing he said was the peak basic
9:32
Speaker 1: right for well, yes, um and uh. Even still it
9:37
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily high, like you had to be one of
9:39
Speaker 1: the well the aristocracy basically to afford sentiment. But then
9:44
Speaker 1: it came down in the late I believe the late
9:46
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, by the time the English got into the game. Um.
9:50
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little more about this right after this.
9:54
Speaker 1: And this is not a message price, so everybody chill out.
9:57
Speaker 1: But um, it came down in price because original there's
10:00
Speaker 1: just the true clon cinnamon. And then people said, well,
10:04
Speaker 1: there's this other cinnamon in Indonesia and Vietnam. Vietnam hasn't
10:08
Speaker 1: been established as a country yet, but there's still people
10:10
Speaker 1: living here and have been for thousands of years, and
10:12
Speaker 1: they got their own kind of sentiment. Uh. And then
10:14
Speaker 1: there's another kind of sentiment in China. And all these
10:17
Speaker 1: are types of cashia, but it's so close to cinnamon
10:20
Speaker 1: and even more pungent that everybody in Europe saying, well,
10:24
Speaker 1: accept this as a substitute. So all prices came down
10:27
Speaker 1: because the supply became more widespread. Gotcha. So that brings
10:32
Speaker 1: us to a very good point. There are two types
10:34
Speaker 1: of cinnamon. The clon what you mentioned in the casha,
10:37
Speaker 1: which you mentioned. The salon is Southeast Asian native, but
10:43
Speaker 1: it is not the kind that you're going to find
10:46
Speaker 1: in the grocery store. Correct. Uh. The ceylon, and I'm
10:50
Speaker 1: really high in grocery store you'd find it, but mostly
10:53
Speaker 1: you I haven't found it because I don't shop at
10:55
Speaker 1: those places. Well you, I mean, you could probably find
10:58
Speaker 1: it at whole Foods. But if you're gonna spend the
11:00
Speaker 1: money for ceylon cinnamon, you're probably gonna want to buy
11:03
Speaker 1: it in stick for him because there's a lot of
11:06
Speaker 1: unscrupulous spice dealers out there, and like they could powder
11:11
Speaker 1: anything and just tell you it is, but you wouldn't
11:13
Speaker 1: know the difference. This the street corner spice dealers, their
11:16
Speaker 1: knockoff nutmegs, the ones who like opened the side of
11:20
Speaker 1: their trench, like what do you want? What do you want?
11:22
Speaker 1: I got baby spitsch to saffron right here, I've got
11:24
Speaker 1: salon cinnamon. I can take care of you. Um, the
11:28
Speaker 1: cashia is cheaper and it's stronger an odor and flavor.
11:33
Speaker 1: And uh, those aren't the only types of cina. Apparently
11:36
Speaker 1: there are more than a hundred wild types of cinnamon
11:38
Speaker 1: trees all over the world. Yeah, and there's not all
11:40
Speaker 1: over the world, but in many parts of the world.
11:42
Speaker 1: So there's and there's true cinnamon, which is in Sri Lanka,
11:46
Speaker 1: and there's Indonesian casha. Then there's also Vietnamese casha, in
11:50
Speaker 1: Chinese casha, um, and all of those are commercially available.
11:55
Speaker 1: If you're here in the United States or in Canada,
11:58
Speaker 1: you're probably eating um cash right. And when you say
12:02
Speaker 1: true cinnamon, that's just not you being snooty. It's called
12:04
Speaker 1: true cinnamon. No, no, no, thank you for pointing that.
12:10
Speaker 1: And then if you're in Mexico and Europe you're probably
12:12
Speaker 1: eating clon. Those are the most popular varieties. Oh yeah, nice.
12:17
Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier on one of what I think
12:21
Speaker 1: is the fact of the podcast is that it's tree
12:22
Speaker 1: bark and how you cultivate it. It's pretty interesting and
12:25
Speaker 1: we will detail that right after this message break. So
12:31
Speaker 1: if you want to get edible cinnamon, it's pretty neat
12:37
Speaker 1: you basically cut the tree back to a stump, cover
12:41
Speaker 1: it with dirt, and wait a year, and that makes
12:44
Speaker 1: it grow like a bush and these shoots are gonna
12:46
Speaker 1: pop out and it's gonna if if you've ever seen
12:50
Speaker 1: these things online, it looks like it starts to curl already,
12:54
Speaker 1: like off the branch. I mean, it looks like cinnamon
12:57
Speaker 1: just waiting to happen, because it is. And they strip
13:01
Speaker 1: off that bark and set it out to dry in
13:03
Speaker 1: the sun, and then that's what it curls up like, um,
13:06
Speaker 1: what's the white tree with the real paper like birch. Yeah,
13:12
Speaker 1: it sort of looks like that, not like pine bark.
13:15
Speaker 1: Is it a birch? I know exactly what you're talking about.
13:18
Speaker 1: I think it is a birch. Birch tree, Yeah, very pretty. Uh.
13:24
Speaker 1: And then once you have it dried out, you're gonna
13:26
Speaker 1: cut it up into your sticks and from there you're
13:30
Speaker 1: gonna package it according to what kind it is and
13:34
Speaker 1: like how good it is, basically how strong it is
13:36
Speaker 1: and um, so that's casha for um ceylon true cinnamon.
13:41
Speaker 1: It's actually the inner bark. So you peel the outer
13:43
Speaker 1: bark off and just like throw it away or light
13:46
Speaker 1: a fire with it or something like that. Then you
13:47
Speaker 1: go after the inner bark. And for um millennia there
13:51
Speaker 1: was actually one cast in Sri Lanka whose job it
13:55
Speaker 1: was was to harvest cinnamon. No one else could do
13:57
Speaker 1: it either you were too low on the total polar
13:59
Speaker 1: too high on the totem pole. And when the Portuguese
14:02
Speaker 1: came along, because the spice trade had been cut off
14:04
Speaker 1: by the Turks, and about the Portuguese came along, found
14:09
Speaker 1: the source of cinnamon, which is a huge thing chuck
14:12
Speaker 1: before everybody just basically thought they fished it out of
14:16
Speaker 1: the nile. People thought there were cinnamon birds that made
14:19
Speaker 1: cinnamon sticks, but it was because the traders along the
14:23
Speaker 1: silk route of Silk Road where um, they'd make up
14:26
Speaker 1: these stories and people would believe it. So finally the
14:29
Speaker 1: Portuguese find out to keep them from finding out, yes, yes,
14:35
Speaker 1: and to justify the ridiculously high prices of cinnamon, like that,
14:39
Speaker 1: well we have to go harvest these sticks from a
14:42
Speaker 1: cinnamon bird's nest and we can get killed, right. So um,
14:47
Speaker 1: the Portuguese come along and they're like, well, we can
14:49
Speaker 1: point to at least one inefficiency. How about we enslave
14:52
Speaker 1: all of you and put you all the work rather
14:55
Speaker 1: than just this one cast of your society to harvest
14:58
Speaker 1: cinnamon and that up cinnamon product. And but what's funny
15:01
Speaker 1: is it took the Dutch to come along in and
15:04
Speaker 1: out the Portuguese and then they themselves can continue to
15:08
Speaker 1: enslave the Sri lankans um. They they thought maybe we
15:13
Speaker 1: could cultivate these trees elsewhere, like nobody had thought told
15:17
Speaker 1: to take these trees and plant them elsewhere and then
15:20
Speaker 1: expand the supply like that. They just figured, all, we'll
15:24
Speaker 1: just let mother nature do it. They're like Suparu drivers.
15:27
Speaker 1: They're just leaving it up to mother nature rather than
15:29
Speaker 1: cultivating the stuff. It took hundreds of hundreds of years. Now.
15:33
Speaker 1: I remember there was that stupid commercial where the guy
15:37
Speaker 1: just let his super get dirty when he was like
15:40
Speaker 1: mudding and going camping and hiking and all that stuff.
15:43
Speaker 1: And then he's like, and I don't wash my car.
15:45
Speaker 1: I just leave it up to the universe. And then
15:47
Speaker 1: it starts raining and like gets all the dirt and
15:49
Speaker 1: dust off of his car. That's that's great. Yes, you know,
15:55
Speaker 1: Elvis used to shoot the TV when Robert Goolay came on,
16:00
Speaker 1: when he was really mad. He'd shoot like a toaster,
16:02
Speaker 1: oven or the dishwasher or whatever. But if he was
16:05
Speaker 1: watching TV and Robert Gooley came on, he would shoot
16:07
Speaker 1: his TV. Did you see that thing I posted on
16:09
Speaker 1: her Facebook page of the day about his drug intake
16:11
Speaker 1: at the end. He was prescribed almost nine thousand pills
16:16
Speaker 1: or injectables in the last three months before he died.
16:19
Speaker 1: That's a lot like that would just take up most
16:21
Speaker 1: of your time in jesting all of those. Yeah. I
16:23
Speaker 1: think I calculated it was something like a thirty thirty
16:26
Speaker 1: five pills a day or something or injectables. It's a lot.
16:30
Speaker 1: But my grandmother still says, God rest her soul. You know,
16:33
Speaker 1: Elvis's doctors killed him. Yeah, And I didn't have the
16:36
Speaker 1: heart to tell her that Elvis was a big fat junkie.
16:40
Speaker 1: You know. She was from Memphis, and they like still
16:43
Speaker 1: were like, oh no, his doctors they just had him
16:44
Speaker 1: going every which way. Oh yeah, yeah, No, I was
16:47
Speaker 1: really love taking those pills. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the Michael Jackson thing. Yeah, he
16:54
Speaker 1: liked his milk. Alright, So back to cinnamon. Oh yeah.
16:59
Speaker 1: They have a grading system called the Freelankan grading system,
17:03
Speaker 1: and that divides it into these quills into sizes, the Alba,
17:07
Speaker 1: which is point two inches or less in diameter, the Continental,
17:11
Speaker 1: which is point six Mexican almost point eight inches, and
17:16
Speaker 1: then Zahambug, which is one point three inches around. That's
17:22
Speaker 1: that's some serious quill. It's like a cigar. Yeah, and
17:25
Speaker 1: some of these things they use like circular sauce to
17:28
Speaker 1: cut these in production sometimes. Really Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
17:34
Speaker 1: That's super impressive. Um, the the clon is sold and
17:38
Speaker 1: quill form and it's uh gonna have that crumbling texture.
17:41
Speaker 1: It's really easy to grind up in the Cashia is
17:45
Speaker 1: the ground cinnamon that you're going to find in your
17:47
Speaker 1: grocery store, but it's too hard to grind your Yeah,
17:51
Speaker 1: it's the entirely true. I ground them up the other day,
17:54
Speaker 1: Jean Recipe. I tried probably not powdery though, was it
17:57
Speaker 1: still pretty chunky? It was? Yeah, I mean got it,
18:00
Speaker 1: broke it down pretty well. After reading this, I was like, well,
18:02
Speaker 1: I explains why I didn't get at all. But I'm
18:05
Speaker 1: glad I didn't mess up my coffee grinder. Oh yeah,
18:07
Speaker 1: you know, you really can't believe me. What what'd you make? Uh,
18:13
Speaker 1: all of them preserved lemon ten It was pretty good.
18:16
Speaker 1: It was hotter than I expected. Um, and I think
18:19
Speaker 1: they should have mentioned that in the rusty, like this
18:21
Speaker 1: is very hot because the preserved lemons I used were
18:25
Speaker 1: hot in and of themselves, and so the whole thing
18:27
Speaker 1: was really hot. So you mean and I are eating
18:30
Speaker 1: and our noses are running. Is so good? But I
18:33
Speaker 1: can't feel my face anymore? Yeah, but it was. It
18:36
Speaker 1: was good. That was used to shoot his cook when
18:38
Speaker 1: she made things too hot. Right, that's not true. He'd
18:42
Speaker 1: also inject preserved lemons. He probably did. I know he
18:46
Speaker 1: injected peanut butter and banana fluff. Yeah. Um, so well
18:50
Speaker 1: that brings just cooking with slemons what you were just
18:53
Speaker 1: talking about. Um, it's a lot a lot of time.
18:56
Speaker 1: It's used in baking here in the States or the
19:00
Speaker 1: quote West unquote right, like as a baking like sugary
19:04
Speaker 1: desserts and stuff like that, or maybe in a drink
19:07
Speaker 1: like a toddy but like anything at Starbucks. Yeah, that's true.
19:12
Speaker 1: They've got that shaker cinnamon out for a reason. Use it.
19:16
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, uh, in the East, like
19:18
Speaker 1: an Eastern dish, like that. It's used a lot to
19:21
Speaker 1: like flavor meat and and curries and stuff. Yeah, which
19:23
Speaker 1: is kind of a in the idea that the West
19:25
Speaker 1: only uses it to sweeten or for desserts or that
19:28
Speaker 1: kind of thing is um relatively new because during the
19:32
Speaker 1: Middle Ages in Europe, uh, the the elite again, we
19:36
Speaker 1: use cinnamon especially to um cover up preserved meat, and
19:42
Speaker 1: it maybe even to preserve meat. But they used it
19:44
Speaker 1: on like meat and savory dishes back back when. Then
19:47
Speaker 1: at some point it made the transition to dessert. I
19:50
Speaker 1: get it. It's nice on an apple pie. Yeah. And
19:53
Speaker 1: uh sportast like I mentioned, and horg chatta that's good
19:57
Speaker 1: stuff with cinnamon horche out of regular right, Jerry thumbs up. Uh.
20:04
Speaker 1: If you buy centiment in the store and you want
20:06
Speaker 1: to preserve it, you store it in a glass air
20:09
Speaker 1: tight container would be the best deal. It's gonna keep
20:11
Speaker 1: it nice and fresh and flavorful. Uh. And it can
20:14
Speaker 1: stay fresh those sticks for about a year if you
20:17
Speaker 1: store it right, which is awesome. If it's ground, it's
20:20
Speaker 1: uh last about half of that that long. Yeah, it's
20:25
Speaker 1: I've had centiment in my cupboard for a long time.
20:27
Speaker 1: Ancient sticks. It's like that in the bay leaves. You know.
20:31
Speaker 1: The thing is is the difference I think between like
20:33
Speaker 1: fresh bay leaves and and dry bay leaves or is significant.
20:37
Speaker 1: I know. But why did they sell you thirty bay
20:40
Speaker 1: leaves when you need to for any given dish? I know,
20:42
Speaker 1: I don't know. I always want to like post on
20:45
Speaker 1: social media like I'm cooking with bay leaves, so please
20:48
Speaker 1: come by and get some bay leaves because they're just
20:51
Speaker 1: gonna end up in the trash right now. I know,
20:53
Speaker 1: anytime I've ever gone to your house, you've always given
20:55
Speaker 1: me bai leaves. Stay all Bailey kind of what you're
20:58
Speaker 1: now for. Um. I put a little cinnamon in the
21:02
Speaker 1: in our chili recipe too. Yeah. I think the Cincinnati
21:04
Speaker 1: chili is famous for that. Oh yeahs and curries. It's
21:09
Speaker 1: really good in curries too, uh and um, just basically
21:14
Speaker 1: any Indian dish or Bangladeshi dish. Yeah, A little goes
21:17
Speaker 1: a long way though, by the way, like just a
21:20
Speaker 1: pinch or so in some of these dishes, you can
21:23
Speaker 1: really taste the flavor. If you overdo it, you're you're
21:25
Speaker 1: gonna be tasting nothing but cinnamon, right if you use casha.
21:30
Speaker 1: That's another big distinction. I think you already said it,
21:32
Speaker 1: but it's worth touching upon again. Salon cinnamon is known
21:35
Speaker 1: to be much subtler and less pungent than cautious cinnamon. Um,
21:41
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of more it has. It offers
21:43
Speaker 1: a more subtle flavor. So um, you actually might want
21:47
Speaker 1: to use casha for a dish where it's gonna it
21:50
Speaker 1: could fade into the background and then you just ceylon
21:53
Speaker 1: for like a t Yeah, you know, because it'll melt
21:56
Speaker 1: right into your your teacup there on it. Plus, it
22:00
Speaker 1: may or may not aid in digestion, which is a
22:03
Speaker 1: pretty great segue to this next part, the health benefits
22:06
Speaker 1: the cinnamon, which we'll talk about all right after this.
22:17
Speaker 1: All right, Josh, health benefits. Um. Now, a lot of
22:22
Speaker 1: this in the article says some believe may or may not.
22:25
Speaker 1: But didn't you find some pretty good hard evidence of
22:28
Speaker 1: some of the stuff. There's been a lot of peer
22:30
Speaker 1: reviewed studies done on cinnamon that have turned up some
22:32
Speaker 1: pretty awesome things about it. Yeah, so let's talk about them.
22:36
Speaker 1: Antioxidants for one, fighting free radicals that damage cells. Yeah,
22:40
Speaker 1: we should do an episode on that. There's a whole
22:44
Speaker 1: so the whole idea that why we age and why
22:48
Speaker 1: we die eventually is because we we get bombarded with
22:52
Speaker 1: like ions and free radicals like adams that are unstable
22:56
Speaker 1: and are bouncing around our bodies and just wearing down cells.
23:00
Speaker 1: That's why we age and that's why we die. Apparently
23:02
Speaker 1: that's been coming under attack lately. So yeah, so I
23:05
Speaker 1: think we should we should do an episode on on
23:07
Speaker 1: free radicals and the free I think it's called the
23:10
Speaker 1: free radical theory of aging. Yeah, that's great because, um, people,
23:14
Speaker 1: everyone says antioxidants, but nobody knows what that means. Well,
23:18
Speaker 1: supposedly those stabilized unstable atoms, and so they therefore go
23:25
Speaker 1: after the free radicals and clump onto them or stabilize them,
23:28
Speaker 1: and then your cell is saved, you know. But whether
23:32
Speaker 1: or not that's actually does anything or is real, the
23:35
Speaker 1: jury is still out apparently to look for that. And right, yeah, um,
23:41
Speaker 1: it is definitely known as an anti microbial and antifungal. Yeah,
23:46
Speaker 1: antiseptic as well, antibiotic, a stringent. It's got lots of
23:50
Speaker 1: neat properties. But you don't want to like take pure
23:54
Speaker 1: cinnamon essential oil and put it on your skin because
23:57
Speaker 1: you want to elude it. Some Yeah, it also can
23:59
Speaker 1: like blister. I mean it's pretty severe Emily has in
24:01
Speaker 1: her shop. And just the smell of it, it doesn't
24:04
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that it's like it didn't
24:06
Speaker 1: even smell like cinnamon and concentrated. Yeah. Um, it doesn't
24:10
Speaker 1: take much essential oil actually, uh to have an antiseptic effect.
24:16
Speaker 1: Apparently the one study found a ten percent concentration of
24:21
Speaker 1: cinnamon oil and the active ingredient. Know if we said
24:24
Speaker 1: is cinamalde hyde. Yeah we did not. Um, so it's
24:28
Speaker 1: not the only the only ingredient in there, but cinamalde
24:30
Speaker 1: hydes the big boss active ingredient and cinnamon's antiseptic properties
24:35
Speaker 1: and I think what gives it its taste. Um. But
24:39
Speaker 1: the cinamalde hyde or the ten percent cinnamon oil uh
24:42
Speaker 1: concentration has been shown to kill staff E Coli mersa strep.
24:51
Speaker 1: Those are some big time players and making you sick mersa.
24:55
Speaker 1: It's apparently been found a ten percent dilution can kill
24:58
Speaker 1: um other kinds of abiotic resistant bacteria. It's like the
25:03
Speaker 1: real deal. And apparently did you see that thing on
25:06
Speaker 1: thieves oil that I sent you from the New York Times? Uh?
25:10
Speaker 1: I did not read that one. It was pretty cool. Um.
25:12
Speaker 1: There's this thing called thieves oil from the Middle Ages.
25:14
Speaker 1: Apparently people used to steal jewelry off of dead bodies.
25:18
Speaker 1: Keeps themselves from getting sick from having to stick their
25:22
Speaker 1: hands literally neck deep into a corpse to get a
25:27
Speaker 1: necklace off. Um, they would use this stuff called thieves
25:29
Speaker 1: oil was like basically a hand sanitizer that consisted of
25:32
Speaker 1: a cinnamon, lemon oil, and eucalyptus and it really worked
25:36
Speaker 1: and they would not get sick after they looted bodies. Yes,
25:40
Speaker 1: because they'd have a glove of that stuff on. We
25:42
Speaker 1: should have saved that for our Christmas episode does the season? Um.
25:49
Speaker 1: It Also, cinnamon has something called calmera cameron c O
25:54
Speaker 1: U M A r I N which is toxic. Though.
25:58
Speaker 1: So while cinnamon has a lot of great helpful properties,
26:03
Speaker 1: you can overdo it and it can cause liver damage,
26:07
Speaker 1: kidney damage. In dust form, you can cause asthma. Um.
26:12
Speaker 1: There was a study done by workers, not by workers
26:15
Speaker 1: on cinnamon workers, and I think they studied forty workers
26:20
Speaker 1: with an average of four year service, and eighty seven
26:23
Speaker 1: point five percent had some sort of negative symptom like
26:27
Speaker 1: liver kidney. No. Nine of them uh, had asthma, irritation
26:34
Speaker 1: to skin, thirty seven percent loss of hair, um, smarting
26:38
Speaker 1: of the eyes, and loss of weight. That was the
26:41
Speaker 1: most common finding. So that's the jury is still out
26:44
Speaker 1: on that and whether or not cinnamon can help you
26:47
Speaker 1: actually lose weight. It help them, um, but I don't
26:50
Speaker 1: think in a good way, right Yeah. Well, I mean
26:54
Speaker 1: some people like I believe you should take tape worms, um,
26:59
Speaker 1: but they're not. Cinnamon actually helps is kind of Um,
27:03
Speaker 1: I don't know. The science is still out on it,
27:05
Speaker 1: but there's a little more science too. Cinnamon being helpful
27:08
Speaker 1: for type two diabetes because apparently taking I think a
27:13
Speaker 1: gram or something of or six grams of cinnamon, which
27:16
Speaker 1: is a decent amount with a meal, um, prevents your
27:22
Speaker 1: food from being digested quickly, so you'll still feel full,
27:26
Speaker 1: but your food doesn't enter it doesn't hit your bloodstream
27:29
Speaker 1: in a big spike, which means that your blood sugar
27:33
Speaker 1: levels don't spike either. It's just kind of like it all.
27:35
Speaker 1: It turns your food into like slow release nutrition. Interesting. Yeah,
27:40
Speaker 1: so that's it could actually be very helpful for people
27:42
Speaker 1: with type two diabetes because it basically arrests the spike
27:45
Speaker 1: in the glycemic index that comes from eating foods. Are
27:48
Speaker 1: they recommending that at this point or is it like
27:51
Speaker 1: they look into it. They're looking into it still. I mean,
27:54
Speaker 1: depending on the website you go to, it recommends it
27:57
Speaker 1: or else. I don't. It doesn't seem like anybody's not
28:00
Speaker 1: recommending it. I think if anything, they're they're including a warning, like,
28:03
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do this, use true cinnamon, because cash
28:07
Speaker 1: is the stuff that has the more kumaran in it,
28:09
Speaker 1: Like salon cinnamon has point zero one seven grams per
28:14
Speaker 1: kilogram of kumar in. But if you get the Saigon cinnamon,
28:19
Speaker 1: which is fairly um widespread, which is a type of cash,
28:23
Speaker 1: it's got seven grams per kilogram of kumaran and that's
28:27
Speaker 1: the stuff that can hurt your liver and kidneys. So
28:30
Speaker 1: I guess if you're going to add that to your
28:32
Speaker 1: diet as a diabetic, you should probably definitely use the
28:37
Speaker 1: cylon cinnamon. Yeah, and one thing he definitely don't want
28:40
Speaker 1: to do is the cinnamon challenge, like these morons on YouTube,
28:46
Speaker 1: including the governor of Illinois who took the challenge, Robovich
28:54
Speaker 1: broad name, Yeah, I remember it was a few years back.
28:59
Speaker 1: He was um he got him for corruption. Yeah, I'm
29:02
Speaker 1: not sure if that was him or not. He was
29:03
Speaker 1: trying to sell Barack Obama's old seat when he became president.
29:06
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember that guy, I don't know or not. Wow,
29:11
Speaker 1: it's almost like you're vomiting the name out, Peter Badanovitch. No,
29:15
Speaker 1: that's easier to say. Don't do the cinnamon challenge. That
29:20
Speaker 1: is a stupid thing on YouTube where I think you're
29:23
Speaker 1: tasked with. Is it a tablespoon of swallowing a tablespoon
29:26
Speaker 1: of cinnamon in a minute, which is uh, not good
29:30
Speaker 1: for you at all and harder than it sounds. Uh.
29:33
Speaker 1: In two thousand and twelve, just the first six months,
29:37
Speaker 1: there were a hundred and seventy eight emergency calls UH
29:41
Speaker 1: to poison control centers around because of the cinnamon challenge.
29:45
Speaker 1: And that is because it contains cellulose and it can
29:48
Speaker 1: lodge in your lungs. Because you're not your body is
29:51
Speaker 1: not gonna break down that cellulose and UH Dr lip Schultz,
29:56
Speaker 1: who was consulted in this article there read said it's
29:59
Speaker 1: code with a caustic cinnamon oil, and it's gonna lead
30:02
Speaker 1: to chronic inflammation and eventual scarring of your lungs pulmonary fibrosis,
30:07
Speaker 1: and he basically says it's equivalent to emphysema, and it
30:10
Speaker 1: can trigger an asthma attack and if you have bad
30:12
Speaker 1: asthma can kill you even plus also, um, consuming cinnamon
30:17
Speaker 1: and excess can cause nausea, vomiting, redness of the face,
30:21
Speaker 1: lip swelling. Yeah, you know want that and it's tree bark. Yeah,
30:25
Speaker 1: it tastes lovely in a pinch, but um, don't don't
30:29
Speaker 1: do that. That's that's stupid. Don't do what the governor
30:31
Speaker 1: of Illinois does. Yeah, if it was that same guy,
30:35
Speaker 1: then we can recommend that how many levels because he
30:38
Speaker 1: did a lot of dumb stuff. Cinnamon. That's it. I
30:41
Speaker 1: got nothing else. Uh. If you want to know more
30:45
Speaker 1: about cinnamon, type that word into the search bar at
30:47
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar,
30:50
Speaker 1: it's time for d That's right. We're gonna finish up
31:02
Speaker 1: today saying thank you all of you who have sent
31:06
Speaker 1: us nice things, from postcards to books, to music to
31:10
Speaker 1: mug rugs. We get a lot of stuff and we
31:13
Speaker 1: always appreciate it. So here we go Ketra Oba Landa
31:18
Speaker 1: for our her original artwork. I'm assuming Ketra as a lady,
31:23
Speaker 1: but maybe not um as part of her art of
31:26
Speaker 1: generosity experiment. And she even said, like I remember that.
31:30
Speaker 1: She's like, I don't need to shout out or thanks
31:32
Speaker 1: or anything. I'm just doing this as part of art
31:34
Speaker 1: for generosity. Yeah, I think she does. It's like one
31:37
Speaker 1: thing a week. Or wasn't there like some rules to it.
31:41
Speaker 1: There were rules, but I didn't memorize there's something like that.
31:44
Speaker 1: And she yeah, she specifically said not to say thank you,
31:46
Speaker 1: but we're saying thank you, thank you. Did she specifically
31:50
Speaker 1: say not to her say she didn't need one, because
31:52
Speaker 1: if she said not to, we really shouldn't thank her. No,
31:54
Speaker 1: I don't think she said not to. She said I
31:56
Speaker 1: really don't need it. We want to give big thanks
32:00
Speaker 1: to Marty from Hawaii for sending us real Hawaiian see salt.
32:04
Speaker 1: We got red and black from Pacifica, Hawaii. That's right.
32:08
Speaker 1: I've used that on my food good stuff. Thanks to
32:12
Speaker 1: Melissa Climber for sending us the book Free Will by
32:16
Speaker 1: Sam Harris um and we've been exercising our free will
32:20
Speaker 1: by not reading that yet. BAM. Peter McGraw and Joel
32:24
Speaker 1: Warner sent us a copy of their book The Humor Code,
32:26
Speaker 1: and a whoopee cushion. Go check that out and you
32:29
Speaker 1: can follow them on Twitter too. We got a whoope cushion.
32:31
Speaker 1: Uh huh, I just thought that was Holly from stuff
32:35
Speaker 1: you miss a history class. I know you thought that.
32:37
Speaker 1: Everyone knows you thought that. Emily and the Flaba for
32:42
Speaker 1: the ikea postcard in the well wishes. Yes, Tyler Murphy
32:45
Speaker 1: has sent us a bunch of stuff. Ummh he's the man. Yes,
32:50
Speaker 1: he's the man. He sent us a copy of the
32:52
Speaker 1: DVD c s A Confederate States of America sent us
32:55
Speaker 1: the book The Mind of Adolph Hitler, which is a
32:58
Speaker 1: very hard to find World War two analysis like psychoanalysis
33:02
Speaker 1: of Hitler, and very nice letter, and a half pound
33:05
Speaker 1: of Dark Canyon Highlander grog coffee which is bo bam. Yeah.
33:09
Speaker 1: Tyler's awesome. He's a teacher as well, which means he's
33:12
Speaker 1: super cool. Uh. And he works at a putt but
33:15
Speaker 1: over the summer. Oh yeah, like pirates cover something. Yeah.
33:19
Speaker 1: I was like, what do you do? He's like, you know,
33:20
Speaker 1: hand out the putters and stuff. Yeah, that sounds like
33:22
Speaker 1: a great job. That place is great. Uh. Congratulations to Mina. Uh.
33:27
Speaker 1: When and Blake Rosendahl on their wedding and they invited
33:31
Speaker 1: us and we appreciate that and we're sorry we couldn't
33:33
Speaker 1: make it. Elliott Nice Bodziani, who is actually from Adult
33:38
Speaker 1: Swim pr Oh. Yeah, they sent us to the Rick
33:41
Speaker 1: and Morty episodes and one of my prize possessions, the
33:45
Speaker 1: Book of Boring Science Stuff. Pretty great that you opened
33:48
Speaker 1: up a couple of pages in Bam, it's carved out.
33:51
Speaker 1: There's a Rick and Morty flask inside's right, and I've
33:53
Speaker 1: got that sitting on my bar at home. Thank you
33:56
Speaker 1: to Andrew uh goh o go golf one of the
34:04
Speaker 1: two I would say golf. Um. He sent us coffee
34:08
Speaker 1: to from the Reverie Coffee coffee roasters. Yeah, then we
34:12
Speaker 1: liked our coffee. Good stuff. Yeah, thanks Andrew Um. Joanna
34:16
Speaker 1: and Jared from Boogie sent us boogieboard jot eight point
34:20
Speaker 1: five inch l c D writers. All three of us
34:23
Speaker 1: got those. It was a huge present. Yeah. I've got
34:26
Speaker 1: that on my fridge actually, yeah, because it's magnetic. Thomas Shaw,
34:29
Speaker 1: thanks for the illustrations that your brother made. They were
34:33
Speaker 1: really awesome and you can go to Imagine Illustrations dot
34:36
Speaker 1: com to check those out. Uh, we got two more one.
34:39
Speaker 1: Bethany Jones of the Base Element from Ontario gave us
34:43
Speaker 1: five types of handmade caramels. They were delicious. We got
34:47
Speaker 1: him a long time ago. We ate them a long
34:49
Speaker 1: time ago. There was fudge vanilla, Florida cell and ginger
34:53
Speaker 1: and then cinnamon fudge and they were awesome. I recommend him.
34:57
Speaker 1: You can go to the dot based dot element at
35:00
Speaker 1: gmail dot com and by go to, I mean email
35:03
Speaker 1: that address. And then lastly, Caleb Bowler Bowler from Roanoke,
35:08
Speaker 1: Indiana sent us some beautiful cobalt blue ceramic mugs that
35:12
Speaker 1: unfortunately arrived in a million, billion, trillion pieces. Yeah, he
35:16
Speaker 1: knows too. He was like, they broke, didn't They went yep?
35:19
Speaker 1: They old man. I think you need a new word
35:23
Speaker 1: to describe what happened to those things. Broke doesn't say it.
35:26
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, huge thanks to Brian bishop Man. Yes he is. Uh.
35:30
Speaker 1: He actually works with Adam Corola. Yeah, fellow podcaster and
35:34
Speaker 1: went through cancer and wrote a book called Shrinkage, Manhood,
35:37
Speaker 1: Marriage and the Tumor that Tried to kill Me. And
35:40
Speaker 1: it's a really funny book. It's got a forward by
35:42
Speaker 1: Adam Carolla and Brian is just super awesome. It made
35:45
Speaker 1: us feel good that he listens to our show. Yeah,
35:47
Speaker 1: because he's a big shots podcasting So thank you very
35:50
Speaker 1: much for that, Brian. I've got another one too. Garrett
35:54
Speaker 1: Nice just sent us some um homie brownies. Yes, Garrett
35:58
Speaker 1: is uh. I think he's like eleven or twelve years old.
36:00
Speaker 1: Garret is very nice and I think he begged him himself.
36:03
Speaker 1: He also had some other things to offer. I can't remember,
36:05
Speaker 1: but it was like brownies or his own pancake batter
36:08
Speaker 1: or something weird like that. That is nice. Yeah, and
36:13
Speaker 1: my final one is thanks as always two Little Bit
36:15
Speaker 1: Sweets handmade candy in Brooklyn, New York. They've been friends
36:21
Speaker 1: and supporters for years and they are growing and they're awesome.
36:25
Speaker 1: You can visit them at Chelsea Market. Yeah, I got
36:27
Speaker 1: to Chelsea Market, or just go to look up a
36:29
Speaker 1: Little Bit Sweets on the internet and buy some of
36:31
Speaker 1: their delicious, delicious candy and candy bars. Yeah. Man, their
36:36
Speaker 1: honeycomb candy is as addictive as it kids. Yeah, and
36:39
Speaker 1: I've said it a million times. The King Bar to
36:41
Speaker 1: me is the best candy bar on the planet Earth.
36:44
Speaker 1: So good all right? Uh So that's it for administrative details.
36:48
Speaker 1: We're cleared out. No one send us anything unless they're
36:52
Speaker 1: Christmas cookies. I guess for the rest of the year, Mona.
36:55
Speaker 1: So we can start over again fresh in two thousand
36:58
Speaker 1: and fifteen. Okay, anyway, if you want to get in
37:01
Speaker 1: touch with this, you can tweet to us at s
37:03
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
37:05
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
37:08
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
37:10
Speaker 1: dot com, and as always, joined us at our home
37:13
Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
37:21
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
37:24
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com.