Safe or not, the thought of consuming beaver secretions might turn your stomach. If you find this ingredient slightly off-putting and want to avoid it, you may have more trouble doing that than you think, as castoreum is often listed simply as вЂњnatural flavoring.вЂќ According to the Food and Drug Administration, castoreum is a generally recognized as safe - which means it is considered safe by experts and thus is exempt from more stringent tolerance requirements.

It seems totally bizarre that something used to denote territory by one mammal should be used by another mammal as a flavoring for food, but the reality is that castoreum (once processed) actually has a very pleasant smell. Castor sacs are a type of scent gland located between the pelvis and base of the tail, and the castoreum that the glands produce is used by beavers to mark their territory. The ingredient is called castoreum and comes from the castor sacs of beavers. As a result, castoreum is now rarely used as a food additive, although it. As science and technology developed, new methods of creating synthetic vanilla became more popular.

It has been used as a fragrance and as a food additive since the early 1900s. If you are partial to a scoop of vanilla, raspberry, or strawberry ice cream every now and then (or more regularly than that) you may be in for a bit of a surprise: A key ingredient in many vanilla-flavored products - from ice cream to baked goods, pudding, and candy - actually comes from beavers. Castoreum is indeed a syrupy, yellow-brown liquid resembling vanilla in both taste and smell.

Vanilla flavoring come from