Les Bourquin, Food Safety Specialist, MSU. return to top QUESTION: Is Mexican vanilla safe?
The answer has not changed since the 1980’s, tourists heading for Mexico to swap their U.S. dollars for drastically devaluated Mexican pesos may find some bargains to offset the high costs of inflation in our own country. But one “bargain” that isn’t is coumarin extract, passed off as genuine vanilla extract, or put into real or artificial vanilla flavoring to give it more zing. Many tourists from the United States fall for this South of the Border offering because it looks like a bonanza. It isn’t. Coumarin, or tonka bean extract, may be displayed on a store shelf or at a roadside stand for as little as $1.50 a quart. When you sniff it, the stuff smells like real vanilla. It isn’t. What’s more, it could be damaging to your health. The U.S. tourist buying such a product has no way of knowing how much coumarin may be present. It follows that the person who takes a little gamble that the amount of coumarin in the bottle isn’t enough to be toxic is playing with loaded dice. Source: Mexica
