Just received 2 8oz. bottles of POSA brand mexican vanilla.Label says no coumadin.
Has anyone had any experience with this item? I'm a little leary of food products manufactured in Mexico.
Alkem
mexican vanilla
Jun 08, 2004
33 Replies
my previous post on this subject had an error. I was referring to coumarin not coumadin. Sorry about that.
Alkem
Are you sure the brand is not Pasa.? Is it pure vanilla extract or imitation? If it says no coumadin it probably does not have coumadin in it. Pure vanilla tastes better but lots of Americans use imitation. Man y foods manufactured in Mexico are Sara Lee or Best Foods,etc. I have lived in Mexico for 18 years and have not had any problem with their manufactured food. Many of your fruits and vegetables come from Mexican. Green Giant, Frosty Acres,etc. Use your vanilla and enjoy it!!
That is what it means. When any lable says "NO" something it means that there isn't any in it. Capice? :-)
I buy Mexican vanilla all of the time. In fact, it is the only vanilla I use except when I need bean for a recipe. In the first place vanilla came from Mexico and then spread around the world. It is not the other way around as some may want you to believe. Mexican vanilla is the best tasting in my opinion. I used to own a bakery back in Missouri and I would never have used any other type of vanilla. Why are you so scared of things from Mexico anyway?
"Maniack" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
I didn't get the idea that the OP had some phobia about Mexican goods in general. There is some reason to be cautious about vanilla from Mexico. Furthermore, I don't think that people have the same level of confidence in Mexico's equivalent (or lack of) of the FDA.
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fragrans, as genuine vanilla is known, is native to Mexico, and wellinto the 19th century makers of high-quality Mexican vanilla had a lock onthe business. But competitors elsewhere in the world began stealing marketshare, and in the 1880s the first synthetic vanilla was developed inGermany. During the Mexican Revolution of 1910-'20 fighting devastated thegulf coast, the center of Mexican vanilla cultivation, and productiondropped sharply. Faced with a flood of cheap ersatz product and little ofthe genuine article to sell, Mexican producers began making syntheticvanilla themselves. But Mexico was still known as the home of the world'sbest vanilla, so the producers didn't admit what they were doing. Theydisguised the artificial taste by adding coumarin, an extract of the tonkabean, Dipteryx odorata. Coumarin tastes and smells just like vanilla, onlymore so. One whiff and your rube tourist from Utah is likely to say, "Whoa,that's good!" No, that's bad. Coumarin has been shown to cause liver damagein lab animals. The Food and Drug Administration restricted it starting in1940 and banned it outright from all foods and food additives sold in theU.S. in 1954. Many other countries have done likewise. Coumarin has its uses. A derivative called dicumarol is used as an anticoagulant (blood thinner). Under the trade name warfarin it's used to poison rats by causing internal bleeding. The 1983 article in FDA Consumer I'm getting this from says "there has been no indication that coumarin itself produces this blood-thinning effect in humans." I'm not so sure. Another FDA Consumer article about the dangers of herbal tea told of a young woman who drank large amounts of a home-brew tea containing coumarin and suffered abnormal menstrual bleeding. So yes, I'd say toxic. On the plus side, it's very reasonably priced. You can get a quart for only a few bucks.
Most of the vanilla sold in Mexico is synthetic, though it doesn't all have coumarin in it. Telltale signs of the fake stuff: clear, or dark and murky (the real stuff is amber colored and translucent), low alcohol content (genuine vanilla extract contains at least 35% ethyl alcohol), laughably low price. Pure Mexican vanilla is available, but you're better off getting it in this country. Warning: it won't be cheap.
Thanks. Will try it.Hope it's half as good as Madagascar Vanilla.
you believe everything a label claims? I don't. Look up some of the FDA actions against food companies.
sanitatio-sanitation--sanitation
And, things are different in mexico.
May i bring up the recent discovery that some mexican candy makers have been printing their labels with lead paint for years?
I use a great alternative that saves $$$ too. I buy bulk vanilla beans from The Atlantic Spice Company [
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]where you can get a pretty good deal if willing to buy in quantity (a1/4 lb is about $58 + S&H, and contains 25-30 beans).You can make your own extract with about 4 beans to an 8 oz. cup of 80proof vodka in an airtight glass container. Let it work for 3 monthsand flip the jar over back & forth a few times a week. Slit the beansopen lengthwise with a good quality knife before immersing. I makeabout 3 cups at a time and give some away as gifts to worthy peoplewho appreciate the difference. The end result is FAR superior to the extract you buy retail.
sounds like a great idea. Do you filter the solution after 3 months or do you use the extract right from the bottle?
alkem
It is propaganda by our media and government. I buy my drugs down there also and have never had any type of problem, except that I am paying the outrageous prices that our government wants people to pay.
Yep, and check out all of the claims against companies inside the US.
That is good Jerry. I have done that and it is wonderful and leaves such a wonderful smell in the air.
Go ahead and believe everything that is reported in the U.S. There are problems but companies in this country also cause problems. The biggest problems are illegals from Mexico.
Buy you are probably buying American made drugs in a Mexican pharmacy.
American and spanish, largely. The spanish versions are made to EU specifications, which are at least as strict as the FDA.
I was going to say something snarky, but ultimately i realized that it's wrong to toy with the *ahem* otherly-abled.
No doubt. But I do think that Mexican standards are more suspect and that is why the OP asked about using a Mexican made product, particularly since the product in question was made with a toxic substance at one time.
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