Who figured out a beaver’s behind tastes like raspberry?

Ok guys, is this for real or not? ickie poo...


Who figured out a beaver’s behind tastes like raspberry?
Posted on May 11, 2012 by Maggie

By now you may have heard, thanks to Jamie Oliver and Dr. Oz, that castoreum is a natural flavor behind some of the products we consume. I use the word “behind” literally, since castoreum is the product of a beaver’s anal glands. Castoreum is totally unique, chemically speaking, to the beaver – not to be confused with that stinky defensive spray that comes from a skunk’s anal glands, or reason dogs walk in circles sniffing each other’s rear ends. Same place, different thing.


After doing a bit of online poking around, I’m declaring this NOT urban myth. The 2005 edition of industry handbook Fenaroli’s Flavor Ingredients reports the average part per million range of castoreum extract present in the following consumables: “Alcoholic beverages, Chewing gum, Frozen dairy, Gelatins and puddings, Gravies, Meat products, Nonalcoholic beverages, Soft Candy.” It’s not the only reputable source; the 1980 CRC Handbook of Food Additives states that castoreum adds “unusual notes to raspberry and strawberry.” I also found mention of castoreum in the 2000 edition of the Council of Europe’s Natural Sources of Flavorings, John Wright’s 2004 book Flavor Creation,  and the 2011 volume of Leung’s Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients: Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics (this is the one I might be putting on my birthday wish list).
Less certain is products you may be consuming that contain castoreum. The blogosphere saysit shows up in the ingredient list of raspberry-tasting items masked as “natural flavors.” I found this  2009 patent application for a product designed to improve the taste of the potassium salt that can be present in low-sodium items; castoreum is one of the hundred or more ingredients that may help it taste better. The problem is that the term “natural flavors” is a specific designation, defined by the FDA as:

Quote :

the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.

Commercial recipes are intellectual property, protected by law – think how many people have tried to figure out the secret behind Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola. And no company, unless they are willing to face a public relations nightmare will admit to putting castoreum in the mix for whatever delicious thing they concoct. That would either be a public relations nightmare or a big-time profit decline.
To be honest, I’m not too concerned with how disgusting it may be. I’ve eaten things that stillgive me sense memory nightmares – the brussels sprouts creme brûlée I barely choked down at LL’s 50th birthday dinner, for example. Much, much, worse that was the limpet sashimi under the stars at the Molokai Ranch after an otherwise lovely and restful day. I’m not here to judge the relative ickiness of one animal product over another – is injesting castoreum any different from eating any other product from an animal? We eat round steaks, otherwise known as rump roast. Same place, different thing, right?
The point I find unacceptable is not in the use of castoreum; that’s a completely different debate. What’s objectionable is the complete lack of transparency behind the FDA’s “natural flavors” designation. A person who chooses to be vegan or vegetarian, or a person with celiac disease or food sensitivities, or a person who just really wants to know what goes in their bodies, can’t ever really choose to consume a manufactured product with “natural flavors” listed as an ingredient because that bag is just too big. Food manufacturer’s intellectual property is protected, sure, but consumers lose any way to know exactly what we are consuming.
Even the most well-intentioned person could make an erroneous assumption. Case in point: I remember watching another mom at a candy store during the 4th grade field trip to Sacramento. It was a looooong day, especially for the kids: 3-hour bus rides each way, tours of the Capitol building and Sutter’s Fort and a jaunt through the Train Museum. Small wonder, by the time we were let loose to go explore Old Town, the kids made a beeline to the candy store.

I know this woman; she generally keeps junk food away from her kids, makes sure they lots of fresh fruit and vegetables . . .  all those good things. So there she was, carefully comparing ingredients in different flavored jelly beans. In what I thought it was a funny place to draw the line, those candies that listed “natural flavors” were fine for her daughter to choose from. Any with “artificial flavors” were banned. She made an assumption, like most of us probably do, that if a product has “natural flavor” listed on a package it has some relationship to the flavor of the product – and that’s NOT the case. That “natural flavor” can be anything from aloe to anise to castoreum to civet. Even in berry-flavored jelly beans.

I’ve got to be honest – I can’t help but wonder what genius figured out a beaver’s behind tastes like raspberry. I blame it on the ancient Roman Empire, where by 77 AD or so, when Pliny wrote his Natural History, castoreum already had a long and illustrious history as a homeopathic medication. He lists 66 uses for the extrude, as curing headache, neck ache, flatulence, constipation, asthma, and epilepsy, as well as a good depilatory. It was used in medicine well into the 18th century, when castor oil – so named to take advantage of castoreum’s popularity – took over in popularity. Small wonder that sometime over the last 2000 years or more someone wondered would happen if you added it to food . . .
Castoreum was, and still is, used in perfume making and is present in some homeopathic products. In these cases, castoreum is clearly labeled as an ingredient. That’s much more honesty than in the food manufacturing industry. Food manufacturing – that sounds like an oxymoron, but the truth is that processed food is manufactured to an astonishing degree. Consumers, beware.


Here is an excellent blog post I found by Vancouver writer TJ Dawe about castoreum and flavorings that’s worth a quick read. And on the off chance you’d like to experiment with castoreum yourself and lack easy access to a beaver trapper, just click here to visit Agro Laboratory and inquire about castoreum pricing. Go ahead – let me know what you come up with.



http://lifeinaskillet.com/2012/05/castoreum/
The Common Food Ingredient That Comes From a Beaver's Anus
Written by  TJ Dawe


Castoreum, a flavouring ingredient, comes from the two sacs between the anus and external genitals of male and female North American beavers. It's bitter, orange-brown, odiferous and oily.
Apart from its original purpose of marking territory (when mixed with urine), it's used in perfumes, in good company with another delightful animal product: ambergris, aka whale vomit.
 
Castoreum helps scent cigarettes and incense. And it's used to enhance the flavour of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, baked goods, gelatins, puddings, soft and hard candies, frozen dairy products and chewing gum. Jamie Oliver told David Letterman it's used in vanilla flavouring in ice cream, but this has been disputed.

So which food products is it used in, specifically? No manufacturer will say, for obvious reasons.
 
Don't we have a legal right to know? Most certainly. But castoreum has been safely included, by the US Food and Drug Administration, in the umbrella category "Natural Flavor." No need to list any ingredients more specific than that.
 
Chapter 5 of Fast Food Nation expounds on the bizarre and shadowy world of Natural Flavors. We tend to think that food tastes like it does because the ingredients taste like they taste. But it ain't necessarily so, if we're talking processed foods, which soak up 90 percent of Americans' food budget.
 
A chemical additive provides the flavour. The majority of these are provided by a number of factories in New Jersey, which are highly secretive about their processes and clients' names. Author Eric Schlosser was allowed to tour several of these factories, and couldn't disclose specific brands, but he witnessed products of these types being flavoured: potato chips, corn chips, bread, crackers, cereal, pet food, ice cream, cookies, candies, toothpaste, mouthwash, antacids, popular soft drinks, sport drinks, bottled tea, wine cooler, all-natural juice drinks, organic soy beverages, beer and malt liquor.

There's also no legal obligation to disclose the components of a colouring agent. One such ingredient is cochineal extract, also called carmine or carminic acid (quick linguistic side note: the word "carminative" refers to something that makes you fart). As Schlosser describes, it comes from "the desiccated bodies of female Dactlyopius coccus Costa, a small insect harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands." Seventy thousand of these creatures get ground up to make a pound of carmine, which helps make foods look pink, red and purple. Schlosser disclosed that this is used in Dannon strawberry yogurt, as well as Ocean Spray pink-grapefruit juice drink, and various frozen fruit bars, candies and fruit fillings.
 
I wish I could give you a specific list of where you might find castoreum, but none of my internet digging gave me anything more specific than repeated references to raspberry candies, and raspberry flavoured foods in general.
 
To paraphrase a bit from George Carlin's book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops, if what you're looking for is raspberry flavour, you really can't do much better than eating some raspberries.
 
And maybe we should politely request our regulating bodies to let us know when we're ingesting crushed red bugs and/or the extract of a beaver's anus.


http://beamsandstruts.com/bits-a-pieces/item/907-castoreum

Lots of things are gross if you think about it.  I try not to think about it. Lots of people eat bugs.... Thank God I don't like raspberry flavor. The grossest is birds nest soup. Nasty!   But I agree, we aren't told everything, pretzels are soaked or cooked somehow in lye, weird yet tasty.

I'll pass on the birds nest soup too. Hominy is corn soaked in lye. Grits are made from hominy and are pretty darn tasty too. Nobody wants to know what's in sausage . . . .

I got a grinder and a sausage kit 2 yrs ago for Christmas. I'm still afraid to use it. If anyone had a good recipe it might entice me to give it a try

At least when you make your own sausages you know what's in them!

Yaddy wrote:

At least when you make your own sausages you know what's in them!

 
 Need anything more be said?

I've had sausages twice in the last 10 days. Both on a stick! I didn't worry about the ingredients once I did thank God for delicious sausage on a stick!

Whatever kills me better get on with it. I'm beyond worrying about my salt intake or fats and high fructose sugar.  I eat whatever I want without guilt.  The way I figure it, Jesus is coming soon maybe within the next ten years or sooner, so I'm not in it for the long haul. I'm not worried about old age, I don't believe I will see it.  I'm not wrapped up in my health a this point. I feel it's a way "they" try to control us.  I impose total freedom  upon myself when it comes to food.  I"m almost 50 and just took my bp, 114/57 pretty good! I work hard, sweat buckets, my hands are callused and  I have all my teeth.     Since I've been drinking almond milk, my hair and nails are crazy healthy.  If I happen to sicken and die, well, that's not so horrible. :)I don't live in fear of it.