Stuff You Should Know - How Cinnamon Works

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

In another commodities edition of SYSK, Josh and Chuck dive into the world of cinnamon, once the world's most prized and pricey spice. But did you know it was really just dried up tree bark? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, so it's Stuff You Should Know, the never ending year.

Man, I am sleepy today. Yeah. I didn't do a little whiskey last night. Oh, that'll make you sleepy. Really nice bourbon. What kind? I can't remember the name of it, but one of those small batches, I wish I could.

Was it bourbon and not rye? I'd love to plug it, it was bourbon, it was delicious. Okay, cool, so very smooth. Let me let you know a little, little known fact. You've told me this, but tell everyone else. About rye? Oh yeah. It's a big deal, man.

Just spread the word. So you know all those little small batch distilleries that make rye and they all have these crazy back stories and all that stuff? All lies, almost across the board lies. Most of the small batch rye sold in the United States by craft distilleries is made in a single factory in Indiana.

Josh was using a lot of air quotes then, including on Indiana, which I didn't quite get. And then they sell it to these people who like put a new label on it, mark the price, whatever they want, even though it's the same thing. You're drinking, whether it's this craft distillery or that craft distillery, it's literally the same rye.

Put a folksy backstory on, and then you're a chump for buying it. That's not true with bourbon, it's just this rye. But a good giveaway is the rye you're drinking, five-year-old rye, and the distillery's only been around since last year. Probably a pretty good bet that they bought and re-bottled it.

And that is a true Josh fact, not like the cigars are supposed to be inhaled when. That's, yes. That's not true. It's tobacco. What do you think you do with tobacco? Cigar writer's right in. Let's clear this up.

Yeah, man, I will forever stand behind, you're supposed to inhale cigars. No, you're not. All right, all right. I mean, you're just puffing your mouth full of smoke for no reason. Okay. Why?

What did you do there? What's the point of that? I don't know, man. Well, okay, so not only can you, do you have to write in and say, yes, you're just supposed to puff on a cigar and not inhale. You have to explain them what the point of a cigar is. You know, you can read up on this, it's pretty easy.

That's fine, okay. I don't need to read, I know that I'm right. Okay, okay. So you sit in your flooded yard and inhale cigars all day long. That's right. We should just have an episode where we do this and just shoot the breeze.

I think this is called arguing, not shooting the breeze. Shooting the breeze is talking about football scores and the weather and all that stuff. We could argue about football scores. There is a, did the Falcons win or did they lose? Oh dude, they lost to the Browns. Yeah, they played the Browns, but it was a close game for a while, right?

It was a heartbreaker. Yeah, terrible, terrible, terrible team. I hate them. See, that's shooting the breeze. That's right. So you mentioned cigars, which actually provides a segue, so let's walk it back to it. Okay.

There's actually, if you think of Cinnamon, which is what we're talking about today. Yeah, one of our commodity podcasts. Yeah, which is the original name for the How Stuff Works TV show. Yeah. Little known, little known fact. Very little known.

But if you think Cinnamon, you think of like, you go up to the grocery store and you pick up like that metal can of McCormick's and you shake it and it makes that nice hollow tinny sound. Oh, with the sticks? Yeah, yeah. Right? Or, yeah, I guess you can think of Ground Cinnamon too.

I forgot about that stuff, but when you think Cinnamon sticks, that's what you think of, right? Yeah. And you pop the top open and you shake a couple out and you look at them and it's like a, it looks like a little stick. And if you look really closely, it's like curled, right?

Yeah. And then like you put it back in the can and put it back on the store shelves and wipe your hands and go, walk away. But what you would probably be surprised to find would be if you dumped one of those out into your hand and it looked kind of like a cigar. Like rather than hollow and curled

when you're looking down the barrel, it looks stuffed like a cigar. But if you did see that, what you would have just come across is Ceylon Cinnamon, also an appropriately known as True Cinnamon. Yeah. Also known as Tree Bark. Yeah.

Which to me is the fact of the podcast. I had no idea that Cinnamon was Tree Bark. Yeah, but think about it. Now that you know that, when you think about what Cinnamon sticks look like. Yeah, totally makes sense. Looks like Curl Up Tree Bark, which is exactly what it is.

Man, we could quit now when people have gotten their zero dollars worth. I know. I know. It's like lightning in their headphones. But we won't because we're gonna tell you more than you ever needed to know about Cinnamon. Obviously the stick form is how you can buy it.

You can also buy the powdered form and sprinkle it on some bread with some butter and sugar. Yes, Cinnamon Toast, delicious. If you have an orchid that you've ever over-watered, you want to take some scissors and trim off any rotted roots and then dab them in Cinnamon. No way.

And it saves off any infection. I just recently brought an orchid back using Cinnamon as an antimicrobial or fungal, I guess. Emily has made an all-natural flea, preventative, preventive, preventative. Preventative. For our dogs. It's got Cinnamon oil, essential oil,

and some other, I think Eucalyptus and maybe Campfer. And then something that's all distilled, or not distilled, but mixed with olive oil and water. Right. And yeah, it's like all natural. We spray it on a little bandana and tie it around their necks. Nice.

It's also a proven mosquito repellent. Yeah. Killer of mosquito larvae. And natural pesticide. Right. Plus it's a dynamite name for a pet. Cinnamon? Yeah.

It's pretty much got it all. That's pretty good. Again, we could stop here, but we won't. So Cinnamon, the commodity. Yes. The spice. It has a pretty long history, actually. I read that it first pops up in writing

in 2700 BCE. No, BCE. BCE. Yeah. That's a long time ago. In a Chinese text about botanical medicines. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Because of all the things we just mentioned, you can do with it. Yeah, and then Moses was messing around with it in the Old Testament. Yeah, he used it in his anointing oil, his Moses brand anointing oil. Right. That he got rich off of.

Man, he makes so much cash. Egyptians supposedly used it for embalming. So I looked that up because it was kind of like, isn't it weird? And I think they used it to mask the smell of embalming during embalming. That makes a little more sense. Yes.

Well, that's used in embalming, I guess. Yeah. Just as a, but not as the agent, embalming agent. Right. But it may have been part of the embalming agent. OK. Well, they definitely used it to when they would burn with funeral pyres, when they would burn bodies,

when they would use cinnamon because it's so aromatic and pungent and dead burning bodies are stinky. Right. But it was also extraordinarily expensive. Apparently, Pliny mentioned that at some, is there any other? He mentioned that at some point, the cost of cinnamon, a pound, the equivalent of a pound of cinnamon

would have been 10 months' wages for the average Roman. So they, I mean, they used it, but they used it fairly sparingly, which is to say Nero, they had burned Nero. Sure. Who didn't fiddle while Rome burned, by the way. No, no. He burned, apparently, like a year's supply worth on his wife's funeral pyre.

Just basically show off, I would guess. Yeah, I was thinking while I was reading this about how, I thought it was kind of funny how spices used to be so, like the trade and so expensive. Yeah. And then when I go to the store, I was like, spices are still kind of expensive. Some of them.

Yeah, 10 months' wages worth. No, but it's not a lot of slavery associated with it. No, but if you're paying like, I guess it's because of the size of the thing. You're paying like sometimes like $6 for a little. No, I know what you mean. Little tiny jar of it. Right.

Or what's the, like compared to saffron, man? Yes. Super expensive. It is, although Trader Joe's has some for a reasonable price. Oh yeah? Yeah, they have a little mini fistful, a baby's fistful. I think it's the unit of measurement on the bottle for like $6.

That's super cheap. Not bad. And I think one of the reasons spices are still kind of pricey is many of them, including cinnamon, are still not mechanized. They're still very labor intensive to harvest. Well, the reason cinnamon came down in price, because even still, I think there was one of the Roman emperors decreed,

he set maximum prices for the whole Roman Empire. And at the time that basically meant for the whole world. Right. And he set the price at about half or a third of what Pliny said was the peak. Per baby's fist. Right? Well, yes.

And even still, it was extraordinarily high. Like you had to be one of the, well, the aristocracy basically to afford cinnamon. But then it came down in the late, I believe the late 18th century, by the time the English got into the game. And we'll talk a little more about this right after this. And this is not a message break, so everybody chill out. But it came down in price, because originally there's

just the true Ceylon cinnamon. And then people said, well, there's this other cinnamon in Indonesia. And Vietnam hasn't been established as a country yet, but there's still people living here and have been for thousands of years. And they got their own kind of cinnamon. And then there was another kind of cinnamon in China.

And all these are types of cashew. But it's so close to cinnamon and even more pungent that everybody in Europe saying, we'll accept this as a substitute. So all prices came down because the supply became more widespread. Gotcha. So that brings us to a very good point.

There are two types of cinnamon, the Ceylon, which you mentioned, and the cashew, which you mentioned. The Ceylon is Southeast Asian native. But it is not the kind that you're going to find in the grocery store, correct? The Ceylon? Yeah. And a really high-end grocery store, you'd find it.

But mostly you'd brought it. I haven't found it because I don't shop in those places. Well, I mean, you could probably find it at Whole Foods. But if you're going to spend the money for Ceylon cinnamon, you're probably going to want to buy it in stick form. Because there's a lot of unscrupulous spice dealers out there. And they could powder anything and just tell you it is.

But you wouldn't know the difference. Yeah. The street corner spice dealers? Exactly. With their knockoff nutmegs? Yeah. The ones who open the side of their trench coat are like, what do you want?

What do you want? I got baby's pistol saffron right here. I got Ceylon cinnamon. I can take care of you. The cashew is cheaper. And it's stronger in odor and flavor. And those aren't the only types of cinnamon. Apparently, there are more than 100 wild types of cinnamon

trees all over the world. Yeah. And there's all over the world, but in many parts of the world. Right. And so there's true cinnamon, which is in Sri Lanka. And then there's Indonesian cashew. Then there's also Vietnamese cashew and Chinese cashew. And all of those are commercially available.

If you're here in the United States or in Canada, you're probably eating cashew. Right. And when you say true cinnamon, that's just not you being snooty. It's called true cinnamon. Right. Yeah.

No, no, no. Thank you for pointing that. Yeah. And then if you're in Mexico and Europe, you're probably eating Ceylon. Those are the most popular varieties. Oh, yeah. Nice.

So I mentioned earlier on one of what I think is the fact of the podcast is that it's tree bark. And how you cultivate it is pretty interesting. And we will detail that right after this message break. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end

of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to

guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

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Harrison on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So if you want to get edible cinnamon, it's pretty neat. You basically cut the tree back to a stump, cover it with dirt, and wait a year. And that makes it grow like a bush. And these shoots are going to pop out. And if you've ever seen these things online, it looks like

it starts to curl already off the branch. I mean, it looks like cinnamon is waiting to happen. Because it is, and they strip off that bark and set it out to dry in the sun, and that's when it curls up. What's the white tree with the real paper-like birch? Is that a birch? Yeah, it sort of looks like that, not like a pine bark.

Is it a birch? I know exactly what you're talking about. I think it is a birch. Birch tree? Yeah, like a real paper tree. Yeah, very pretty. And then once you have it dried out, you're going to cut it up into your sticks.

And from there, you're going to package it according to what kind it is and how good it is, basically how strong it is. Right. And so that's cashew for ceylon, true cinnamon. It's actually the inner bark. So you peel the outer bark off and just throw it away or light a fire with it or something like that. Then you go after the inner bark.

And for millennia, there was actually one cast in Sri Lanka whose job it was was to harvest cinnamon. Wow. No one else could do it. Either you were too low on the totem pole or too high on the totem pole. And when the Portuguese came along, because the spice trade had been cut off by the Turks in about 1200, the

Portuguese came along, found the source of cinnamon, which is a huge thing, Chuck, before everybody just basically thought they fished it out of the Nile. People thought there were cinnamon birds that made cinnamon sticks and no one had an idea where to get them. Silly, silly people. But it was because the traders along the Silk Road were, they'd make up these stories and people would believe it.

So finally, the Portuguese find out. Was that to keep them from finding out? Yes. Okay. And? Misdirection. Yes. And to justify the ridiculously high prices of cinnamon.

Oh, sure. Like, well, we have to go harvest these sticks from a cinnamon bird's nest and we can get killed, right? Very angry. So the Portuguese come along and they're like, well, we can point to at least one inefficiency. How about we enslave all of you and put you all to work rather than just this one cast of your society to harvest

cinnamon and that up-cinnamon production. But what's funny is it took the Dutch to come along and oust the Portuguese and then they themselves continue to enslave the Sri Lankans. Yeah. And they thought, maybe we could cultivate these trees elsewhere. Like, nobody had thought to take these trees and plant them

elsewhere and then expand the supply like that. Right. They just figured, we'll just let mother nature do it. They're like Subaru drivers. They're just leaving it up to mother nature rather than cultivating this stuff. Is that their slogan or something? Hundreds of years.

Now, remember there was that stupid commercial where the guy just let his Subaru get dirty when he was like muddin and going camping and hiking and all that stuff. And then he's like, and I don't wash my car. I just leave it up to the universe. And then it starts raining and it like gets all the dirt and dust off of his car. That's great.

Yes. Good for him. You know, Elvis used to shoot the TV when Robert Goulet came on. And when he was really mad, he'd shoot like the toaster oven or the dishwasher or whatever. If he was watching TV and Robert Goulet came on, he would shoot his TV.

Did you see that thing I posted on our Facebook page today about his drug intake at the end? Yeah. He was prescribed almost 9,000 pills or injectables in the last three months before he died. That's a lot. Like that would just take up most of your time ingesting all of those.

Yeah. I think I calculated it was something like 30, 35 pills a day or something or injectables. That's a lot. But my grandmother still says, God rest her soul. You know, Elvis's doctors killed him. Yeah. And I didn't have the heart to tell her that Elvis was

a big fat junkie. You know, she was from Memphis and they like still were like, oh no, his doctors. They just had him go in every which way. Oh, yeah, yeah. Elvis really loved taking those pills. I got to. Yeah, I think you're right.

Yeah. Sort of like the Michael Jackson thing. Yeah, he liked his milk. All right. So back to Cinnamon. Oh, yeah. They have a grading system called the Sri Lankan grading system.

And that divides it into these quills and the sizes. The Alba, which is 0.2 inches or less in diameter. The Continental, which is 0.6. Mexican, almost 0.8 inches. And then the Hamburg, which is 1.3 inches. Right. Around. That's a serious quill.

It's like a cigar. Yeah. And some of these things they use like circular saws to cut these in production sometimes. Really? Yeah. That's pretty impressive. It's super impressive.

The Ceylon is sold in quill form. And it's going to have that crumbling texture. It's really easy to grind up. And the Cascia is the ground cinnamon that you're going to find in your grocery store. But it's too hard to grind. Yourself? Yeah.

It's not entirely true. I ground some up the other day for a Tejean recipe I tried. Probably not powdery, though. Was it still pretty chunky? It was. Yeah. It broke it down pretty well after reading this. I was like, well, it explains why it didn't get at all.

But I'm glad I didn't mess up my coffee grinder. Oh, yeah. You know? You really can believe me. Sure. What did you make? Olive and preserved lemon Tejean. Was it good?

It was pretty good. It was hotter than I expected. And I think they should have mentioned that in the recipe. Like this is very hot. Because the preserved lemons I used were hot in and of themselves. And so the whole thing was really hot. You mean I are eating and our noses are running? This is great.

This is so good. But I can't feel my face anymore. Wow. Yeah. But it was good. Elvis used to shoot his cook when she made things too hot. Right. That's not true.

Yeah. He'd also inject preserved lemons. He probably did. I know he injected peanut butter and banana fluff. Yeah. So, well, this brings us to cooking with sentiments, what you were just talking about. It's a lot of time it's used in baking here in the states or the quote West unquote. Right.

Like as a baking like sugary desserts and stuff like that or maybe in a drink. Yeah. Like a toddy. Sure. Or like anything at Starbucks. Yeah, that's true. They've got that shaker cinnamon out for a reason. Use it.

But like you were saying in the east like an eastern dish like that. It's used a lot to like flavor meat and curries and stuff. Which is kind of in the idea that the West only uses it to sweeten or for desserts or that kind of thing is relatively new because during the Middle Ages in Europe the elite again would use cinnamon especially to cover up preserved meat. And maybe even to preserve meat but they used it on like meat and savory dishes back when. Yeah. Then at some point it made the transition to dessert.

I get it. It's nice on an apple pie. Yeah. And a cinnamon toast like I mentioned. And horchata. That's good stuff with cinnamon. Horchata regular. Right, Jerry?

Thumbs up. If you buy cinnamon in the store and you want to preserve it you store it in a glass airtight container would be the best deal. Oh yeah. It's going to keep it nice and fresh and flavorful and it can stay fresh. Those sticks for about a year if you store it right which is awesome. If it's ground it lasts about half of that long. Yeah.

I've had cinnamon in my cupboard for a long time. Oh yeah. That's an ancient stick. It's like that in the bay leaves. Yeah. You know. The thing is is the difference I think between fresh bay leaves and dry bay leaves is significant. I know but why do they sell you 30 bay leaves when you need two for any given dish?

Well I know. I don't know. I know like posts on social media like I'm cooking with bay leaves so please come by and get some bay leaves. Yeah. Because they're just going to end up in the trash. Right. No I know.

Any time I've ever gone to your house you've always given me bay leaves. Stale bay leaves. Kind of what you're known for. I put a little cinnamon in our chili recipe too. Yeah. I think the Cincinnati chili is famous for that. Oh yeah that's right. You told me that.

That's good. And curries. It's really good in curries too. And just basically any Indian dish or Bangladeshi dish? Yeah. A little goes a long way though by the way. Like just a pinch or so in some of these dishes you can really taste the flavor. If you overdo it you're going to be tasting nothing but cinnamon.

Right. If you use kasha that's another big distinction. I think you already said it but it's worth touching upon again. Ceylon cinnamon is known to be much subtler and less pungent than kasha cinnamon. And it's kind of more, it offers a more subtle flavor. So you actually might want to use kasha for a dish where it could fade into the background. Right. And then use your ceylon for like a tea.

Yeah. Because it'll melt right into your teacup there won't it? Plus it may or may not aid in digestion which is a pretty great segue to this next part of the health benefits of cinnamon which we'll talk about right after this. Seriously I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband Michael. Um hey that's me.

Yep we know that Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh just stop now. Don't tell everybody ya everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll

never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison.

It's gonna be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this. We have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward

and letting everybody care for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're gonna want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Alright Josh, health benefits. Now, a lot of this in the article says some believe may or may not. But didn't you find some pretty good hard evidence of some of this stuff? There's been a lot of peer-reviewed studies done on cinnamon that have turned up some pretty awesome things about it. Yeah, so let's talk about them. Antioxidants, for one, fighting free radicals that damage cells. Yeah, we should do an episode on that. So the whole idea that why we age and why we die eventually is because we get bombarded with ions and free radicals.

Like atoms that are unstable and are bouncing around our bodies and just wearing down cells and that's why we age and that's why we die. Apparently that's been coming under attack lately. So I think we should do an episode on free radicals and I think it's called the free radical theory of aging. Yeah, that's great because people, everyone says antioxidants but nobody knows what that means. Right, well supposedly those stabilize unstable atoms and so they therefore go after the free radicals and clump onto them or stabilize them and then your cell is saved. Right. You know, but whether or not it's actually does anything or is real, the jury's still out apparently. So look for that in 2015.

Yeah. It is definitely known as an antimicrobial and antifungal. Yeah, antiseptic as well, antibiotic, astringent. It's got lots of neat properties but you don't want to like take pure cinnamon, essential oil and put it on your skin because. You want to dilute it some. Yeah, it also can like blister. I mean, it's pretty severe. Emily has it in her shop and just the smell of it, it doesn't.

It's one of the things that it's like it doesn't even smell like cinnamon. Oh yeah, because it's so concentrated. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't take much essential oil actually to have an antiseptic effect. Yeah. Apparently one study found a 10% concentration of cinnamon oil in the active ingredient. I don't know if we said a cinnamaldehyde.

Yeah, we did not. So it's not the only ingredient in there but cinnamaldehyde is the big boss active ingredient in cinnamon's antiseptic properties and I think what gives it its taste. But the cinnamaldehyde or the 10% cinnamon oil concentration has been shown to kill staff, E. coli, MRSA, strep. Those are some big time players in making you sick. MRSA. Heck yeah. It's apparently been found a 10% dilution can kill other kinds of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Yeah.

It's like the real deal. Totally. And apparently did you see that thing on thieves oil that I sent you from the New York Times? I did not read that one. It was pretty cool. Yeah. There's this thing called thieves oil from the Middle Ages. Apparently people used to steal jewelry off of dead bodies.

Uh-huh. Which keeps themselves from getting sick from having to stick their hands literally neck deep into a corpse to get a necklace off. Sure. They would use this stuff called thieves oil. It was like basically a hand sanitizer that consisted of cinnamon, lemon oil, and eucalyptus. Oh. And it really worked. And they would not get sick after they looted bodies.

Yes. Well, that's nice. Because they'd have a glove of that stuff on. We should have saved that for our Christmas episode. It is the season. It also, cinnamon has something called calmerin, C-O-U-M-A-R-I-N, which is toxic though. So while cinnamon has a lot of great, helpful properties, you can overdo it. And it can cause liver damage, kidney damage in dust form.

It can cause asthma. There was a study done by workers, not by workers, on cinnamon workers. And I think they studied 40 workers with an average of four-year service. Uh-huh. And 87.5% had some sort of negative symptom. Like liver, kidney. Uh, no. Nine of them, 22% had asthma.

Oh, wow. 50% irritation to skin, 37% loss of hair, 22% smarting of the eyes, and 65% loss of weight. That was the most common finding. So the jury's still out on that. And whether or not cinnamon can help you actually lose weight. Wow. It helped them. But I don't think in a good way.

Right. Yeah. I mean, some people like believe you should take tapeworms to lose weight. True. But whether or not cinnamon actually helps is kind of a, I don't know, the science is still out on it. But there's a little more science to cinnamon being helpful for type 2 diabetes. Because apparently taking, I think a gram or something, or six grams of cinnamon, which

is a decent amount. Yeah. So prevents your food from being digested quickly. So you'll still feel full, but your food doesn't enter, it doesn't hit your bloodstream in a big spike, which means that your blood sugar levels don't spike either. It's just kind of like, it all, it turns your food into like slow release nutrition. Interesting. Yeah.

So it could actually be very helpful for people with type 2 diabetes because it basically arrests the spike in the glycemic index that comes from eating foods. Are they recommending that at this point, or is it like they're sort of looking into it? They're looking into it still. Okay. I mean, depending on the website you go to, it recommends it or else. Oh, right.

It doesn't seem like anybody's not recommending it. I think if anything, they're including a warning like, if you're going to do this, use true cinnamon. Right. Because cash is the stuff that has the more cummerin in it. Like saline cinnamon has 0.017 grams per kilogram of cummerin. But if you get the Saigon cinnamon, which is fairly widespread, which is a type of cash it, it's got seven grams per kilogram of cummerin and that's the stuff that can hurt your liver

and kidneys. Gotcha. So I guess if you're going to add that to your diet as a diabetic, you should probably definitely use the saline cinnamon. Yeah. And one thing you definitely don't want to do is the cinnamon challenge like these morons on YouTube, including the governor of Illinois who took the challenge, Rob Blagojevich, Rod Blagojevich.

That's the same. Yeah. I remember it was a few years back. He was, they got him for corruption. Yeah. I'm not sure if that was him or not. He was trying to sell Barack Obama's old seat when he became president. Oh yeah.

I remember that guy. I don't know if it was him or not. Rod Blagojevich. Wow. It's almost like you're vomiting the name out. Peter Bogdanovich. No, that's easier to say. Yeah.

Blagojevich. Don't do the cinnamon challenge. That is a stupid thing on YouTube where I think you're tasked with, is it a tablespoon? Yeah. Of swallowing a tablespoon of cinnamon. In a minute. In a minute, which is not good for you at all. And harder than it sounds.

In 2012, just the first six months of 2012, there were 178 emergency calls to poison control centers around the U.S. Really? The cinnamon challenge. And that is because it contains cellulose and it can lodge in your lungs because your body's not going to break down that cellulose. And Dr. Lipscholtz, who was consulted in this article there, said, it's coated with the caustic cinnamon oil and it's going to lead to chronic inflammation and eventual scarring

of your lungs, a pulmonary fibrosis, and he basically says it's equivalent to emphysema. It can trigger an asthma attack and if you have bad asthma, it can kill you even. Plus also, consuming cinnamon and excess can cause nausea, vomiting, redness of the face, lip swelling. Yeah. You don't want that. And it's tree bark. Yeah.

It tastes lovely in a pinch, but don't do that. That's stupid. Don't do what the governor of Illinois does. Yeah. If it was that same guy, then we can recommend that on many levels. Because he did a lot of dumb stuff. Yeah. That's it.

Cinnamon. That's it. I got nothing else. If you want to know more about cinnamon, type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for Edmund String, D-J-O. That's right. We're going to finish up today saying thank you to all of you who have sent us nice things. Yeah.

Postcards, the books, the music, the mug rugs, we get a lot of stuff and we always appreciate it. So, here we go. Ketra Obolanda for her original artwork, I'm assuming Ketra is a lady, but maybe not. I believe so. As part of her Art of Generosity experiment. And she even said like- That's right.

I remember that. She's like, I don't need a shout out or a thanks or anything. I'm just doing this as part of Art for Generosity. Yeah. So, it's like one thing a week or wasn't there like some rules to it? There were rules, but I didn't memorize. Something like that. And yeah, she specifically said not to say thank you, but we're saying thank you.

Thank you. Did she specifically say not to or say she didn't need one? Because if she said not to, we really shouldn't thank her. No, I don't think she said not to. Okay. She said I really don't need it. Okay. Yeah.

We want to give a big thanks to Marty from Hawaii for sending us real Hawaiian sea salt. We got red and black from Pacifica, Hawaii. That's right. I've used that on my food. Good stuff. Thanks to Melissa Clymer for sending us the book Free Will by Sam Harris. Yep. And we've been exercising our free will by not reading that yet.

Bam. Peter McGraw and Joel Warner sent us a copy of their book, The Humor Code, and a Whoopee Cushion. Go check that out and you can follow them on Twitter too. We got a Whoopee Cushion? Uh-huh. That was Holly from Stuff You Miss in History Class. I know.

You thought that. Everyone knows you thought that. Emily and the Flavia for the Ikea postcard and the Wellwishes. Yes. Tyler Murphy has sent us a bunch of stuff. Oh, Murph. He's the man. Yes, he is the man.

He sent us a copy of the DVD, CSA, Confederate States of America. Yeah. Sent us the book, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, which is a very hard to find World War II era analysis, like psychoanalysis of Hitler. Oh, yeah. And a very nice letter, and a half pound of Dark Canyon Highlander Grog coffee, which is the bomb. Yeah.

Tyler's awesome. He's a teacher as well, which means he's super cool. And he works at a putt butter with the summer. Oh, yeah. Like Pirates Cove or something. Yeah, yeah. I was like, what do you do? He's like, you know, hand out the putters and stuff.

Yeah. That sounds like a great job. That place is great. Congratulations to Mina Nguyen and Blake Rosendahl on their wedding. Yeah. They invited us, and we appreciate that, and we're sorry we couldn't make it. Yeah. Elliot Nispoziani, who is actually from Adult Swim PR, they sent us the Rick and Morty episodes

and one of my prized possessions, the Book of Boring Science stuff. It's pretty great. That you open up a couple of pages and bam, it's carved out there's a Rick and Morty flask inside. That's right. I've got that sitting on my bar at home. Nice. Here's Andrew Gough, G-O-U-G-H.

Gough? Gough? It's one of the two. Gough. I would say Gough. Andrew Gough. Gough. He sent us coffee, too, from the Reverie Coffee Roasters, and we'd like our coffee.

Good stuff. Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Joanna and Jiren from Boogie Board Jot, 8.5-inch LCDE writers. All three of us got those. That was a huge present. Yeah, I've got that on my fridge, actually, because it's magnetic. Yes, it is.

Thomas Shaw, thanks for the illustrations that your brother made. They were really awesome and you can go to ImagineInlustration.com to check those out. We got two more. One, Bethany Jones of the Base Element from Ontario gave us five types of handmade caramels. They were delicious. We got them a long time ago. We ate them a long time ago. There was fudge, vanilla, fleur de sel, and ginger, and then cinnamon fudge.

They were awesome. I recommend them. You can go to v.base.element at gmail.com. By go to, I mean email. That address. Yeah. Then lastly, Kayla Bowler from Roanoke, Indiana, sent us some beautiful cobalt blue ceramic mugs that unfortunately arrived in a million, billion, trillion pieces.

He knows, too. He was like, they broke, didn't they? I went, yep. Man, I think you need a new word to describe what happened to those things. Broke doesn't say it. Yeah. Huge thanks to Brian Bishop. Man, yes.

He actually works with Adam Corolla, fellow podcaster, and went through cancer and wrote a book called Shrinkage, A Manhood Marriage and the Tumor that Tried to Kill Me, and it's a really funny book. It's got a four by Adam Corolla, and Brian is just super awesome. It made us feel good that he listens to our show because he's a big shot in podcasting. So thank you very much for that, Brian. I've got another one, too. Garrett Nice just sent us some homemade brownies.

Yes. Garrett is, I think he's like 11 or 12 years old. Garrett, that is very nice of you. I think he baked them himself. He also had some other things to offer. I can't remember, but it was like brownies or his own pancake batter or something weird like that. That is nice.

Garrett, nice. Yeah. And my final one is thanks as always to Little Bit Suites, Handmade Candy in Brooklyn, New York. They've been friends and supporters for years, and they are growing, and they are awesome. Garrett Yep. You can visit them at the Chelsea Market. Garrett Yeah.

Got a Chelsea Market, or just go to look up Little Bit Suites on the Internet and buy some of their delicious candy and candy bars. Garrett Yeah. Their honeycomb candy is as addictive as it gets. Garrett Yeah. And I said it a million times. The King Bar, to me, is the best candy bar on the planet Earth. Garrett That's a good one.

Garrett So good. Garrett All right. So that's it for administrative details. We are cleared out. No one send us anything, unless they're Christmas cookies, I guess, for the rest of the year. So we can start over again fresh in 2015. Okay. Anyway, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast.

You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner?

Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.