341: A Deep Dive Into Vanilla w/ Cheryl Whitten
A single pound of vanilla beans costs, on average, $300, making it the second most expensive spice in the world, second to saffron. So what exactly makes this spice so expensive? Surprisingly the answer to this question basically comes down to a little bee! Learn about vanilla's history, its uses, and its fascinating blooming cycle on today's deep dive into vanilla with certified clinical aromatherapist Cheryl Whitten. You'll also learn the difference between vanilla extract, vanilla essential oil, vanilla oleoresin, and so much more.
Cheryl Whitten is a certified clinical aromatherapist, master herbalist, and health writer. She has studied with some of the world's most renowned experts in botanical medicine and teaches students of her own around the globe. She is the author of Essential Oil Dilution Guide and her work has appeared on leading health sites and in peer-reviewed journals. You can find Cheryl online at thearomatherapist.ca
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Healthy pumpkin spice creamer
From: Melissa Wright
Ingredients:
Combine the following in a blender:
2 cups almond or coconut milk
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2 drops cinnamon bark vitality
2 drops clove vitality
1 drop ginger vitality
1 tsp vanilla extract
add honey or sweetener if desired
Directions:
Blend, refrigerate, and keep in an airtight container. Shake before using. Use within a week.
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Episode Transcript
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0 (2s): Life is short. Eat dessert. First, Jacque tore
1 (8s): Empowerment in education. Two powerful elements that will help you break free of convention and transform your passion for wellness tool level beyond the status quo, The essential oil revolution where you're given the tools to supersede an ordinary, everyday lifestyle, inspiring speakers, DIY recipes, healthy living tips, and more. You'll discover it all here. So tune in and get ready for a wellness revolution.
0 (38s): Welcome. Welcome to the Essential Oil Revolution. I'm your host, Samantha Lee Wright. And today on our show, we are going to dive deep, deep, deep into one of the world's most precious and sought after botanicals, vanilla. We'll talk about what are the differences between vanilla extract, artificial vanilla, vanilla, essential oil, vanilla resin, and vanilla olio, and what exactly makes this botanical so sought after? And rare hint, it may have something to do with a little B.
0 (1m 18s): It's a fascinating story. You're going to absolutely love this episode. We'll get to that interview soon. But first, let's pull a recipe out of our DIY dugout. Today's recipe comes from Melissa Wright, and it's for a healthy pumpkin spice creamer. To make this healthy pumpkin spice creamer, you'll need two cups, almond or coconut milk, half a cup pumpkin puree, two drops, cinnamon bark, vitality essential oil, two drops, clove vitality, one drop ginger vitality, and one teaspoon vanilla extract. Add honey or sweetener if desired, blend refrigerate, and keep in an air tight container shake before using and use within a week Perfect time of the year to try out this delicious recipe.
0 (2m 11s): Thank you so much for sending that in, Melissa. And because you sent us that recipe, you have been randomly chosen as our winner for this month. For our monthly giveaways, we will send you a bottle of orange essential oil and our favorite ebook chalk full of our favorite recipes. Congratulations, Melissa Wright, and thanks again for sending us your recipe. If you have your own recipe that you would like to send in, you'll get automatically entered to win our monthly giveaways. Just email it to us at diy revolution oils podcast.com. Support for our show comes from story worth.
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0 (6m 29s): That's V G A M O U r.com/revolution code revolution to save 20% at bemore.com/revolution. Well, I'm here with Cheryl Whitten, who is a certified clinical aroma therapist, master herbalist, and health writer. She has studied with some of the world's most renowned experts in botanical medicine and teaches students of her own around the globe. She is the author of Essential Oil Dilution Guide, and her work has appeared in leading health sites and in peer reviewed journals.
0 (7m 12s): You can find Cheryl online@thearomatherapist.ca ca. Welcome to the show, Cheryl. How are you?
4 (7m 20s): Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I am wonderful.
0 (7m 24s): I'm so excited to have you here, and I always relish the opportunity to pick the brain of a clinical aromatherapist as well, and I appreciate you doing this deep dive for us On vanilla, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna call it vanilla essential oil, but that's sort of my first question. Is that even the correct term to use, is there such thing as a vanilla essential oil?
4 (7m 49s): Yeah, so that's a really great question. Vanilla is, first of all, let's just talk a little bit about vanilla and the spice. So vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world after saffron and a pound of vanilla beans will run you about 300 bucks. So what that means is that automatically, someone somewhere will try and make a knockoff product to sell on the cheap. And you actually see that everywhere with vanilla, even in the products that we use for baking and cooking. And so you can search up vanilla essential oil on Amazon right now, and you'll see a product that is labeled, you know, as vanilla quote unquote essential oil, and it'll be like 13 bucks for 30 milliliters, which is like an ounce.
4 (8m 43s): So when you kind of look at the math, that is insane. If you're getting a pound of beans for 300 bucks, $13 for an ounce of an essential oil is literally insane. So,
0 (8m 54s): And let's just like visualize that for a second. Like you're saying, one pound of vanilla beans, these, these are derived from the beans of a of a plant. Compare that to like a pound of coffee, right? If you're holding, you go to the store and you buy a pound of coffee, you're gonna spend maybe what, like 10 to $20 depending on the quality for that pound versus that you said $300 for a pound of vanilla beans. That's a, that's a stark difference.
4 (9m 20s): It's incredibly expensive. And so the reality is that there is no such thing as a vanilla essential oil, and that product is likely fake or it's, or else it's just simply deceptive. Or the person who is selling that product maybe just doesn't have the correct understanding to know that there is no such thing as a vanilla essential oil. And so it's just maybe, do you wanna be buying a product from them if they don't really understand how vanilla works? You know what I mean? So to kinda understand that, I wanna just go into the basics, a little bit of essential oil.
4 (9m 60s): So I know obviously your audience is familiar with essential oils, but to understand that we kind of have to understand what an essential oil is in, compare it to what we get from vanilla. So an essential oil is a mixture of volatile aromatic compounds of a plant, and those are the things that give plants flavor and aroma. So you know, we think about things like alpha pinine and pine or menthol and peppermint. And in the plant itself, they have a lot of functions, right? But the key is, is that those, these compounds are volatile, which means they evaporate very easily. So that means that they have to be extracted from the plant in a very specific way in order to actually capture those, these compounds.
4 (10m 47s): So by definition, an essential oil is distilled or cold pressed in the case of citrus oils. And so there are a few different types of distillation. So we can get hydro distillation where we boil the actual plant material in water or steam distillation, which is the most common form, and that's where we pass steam through the plant material and that pulls out the compounds. And then there's a whole process of collecting those compounds, con condensing them, and then separating the essential oil. But some plants don't release their compounds very well in water, so they actually have to be extracted using organic solvents or liquid carbon dioxide.
4 (11m 36s): So by definition, those products, these ones that are extracted with a solvent are not actually essential oils. Instead that we get things like absolutes or resinoid. And in the case of carbon dioxide, we get a carbon dioxide extract, which is called a CO2 extract a lot of the time. And so what does that mean for vanilla? Well, vanilla has these wonderful aromatic compounds and we can smell those in the, in the actual product. And those are found in the bean, as we said. But these beans don't release aromatic compounds very well, so they have to be extracted with a solvent.
4 (12m 20s): So the product that we actually get from vanilla is either an olio resin or an absolute or a CO2 extract. So by definition, we don't actually ever get a vanilla essential oil.
0 (12m 35s): Yeah. So I wanted to read from the Young living website, that's where I get my vanilla oil from. And they have a blog article that kind of covers this, this question, Is there such a thing as vanilla oil? And they say, Well, there's kind of like two answers this. The first answer is simply no, because the way everything you just described, the way it's processed, the second answer is yes, kind of, because the way that they have formulated their vanilla, they have basically packaged it into a bottle that can be used like an essential oil. So you can put it in a diffuser, you can, you know, mix it with a carrier oil, put it on your skin, you know, all the same ways you would use another oil with, But, but for those that are, you know, kind of purist, it's important, it's important to know it's not technically an essential oil.
0 (13m 23s): The way that they process theirs is they take the, they take the beans and they combine theirs, what they fractionated coconut oil, and then they remove the naturally sourced ethanol oil, Ethel alcohol from french sugar beads. I thought that was really interesting. And process the result with the coconut oil. And that's what then creates a pure vanilla OEO resin. So it's very fascinating to me that we go through all these steps. A lot of people have gone through these painstaking steps to pr us vanilla quote unquote essential oil because everyone loves it so much, right? It's just one of the most heavenly scs.
0 (14m 7s): And the demand was just so high. People wanted this scent, they wanted to capture this scent in their homes. And I thought that was really fascinating. So I have one, one question I had for you is, do you know why the beans, this, the plant is so expensive, You know, is there something really special about where it's grown, how it's grown, how susceptible it is to disease, those kinds of things?
4 (14m 30s): Yeah. So just to back up a second too about what you were saying about it, you know, essentially being a type of essential oil, that's kind of like the absolute as well, like all these products are considered, we use them in aromatherapy, but yeah, it's just basically a technical technicality that yeah, you know, why definition that we're talking about. But yes, vanilla is, is so expensive. And one of the, the, the really main reason why is, is that it's extremely delicate plant and it's hard to harvest. And that's mostly because the plant has to be hand pollinated. So the most common vanilla is bourbon vanilla, and that's the species vanilla plano, follia or vanilla forgotten.
4 (15m 17s): And that's actually native to Mexico today. Most of it grows in Madagascar, but vanilla is this creeping vine and it that produces orchids. And the vanilla bean, the issue is that this vanilla is only pollinated by one specific bee called the meina B, and these bees are only found in Mexico, and they're actually nearly extinct. So we have to now manually pollinate the orchid. So that's like a very labor intensive process.
4 (15m 57s): Right? And then on top of that, the, each orchid only blooms for one day a year, and the blooming season for the plant lasts several weeks, but, and new flowers open up every day, but each orchid only lasts for one day, and they actually usually wilt within a few hours once they bloom. So if those orchids aren't pollinated, they'll fall off. And then you've missed your window for producing beans. So you have to, there's this small window to pollinate and then you have to manually pollinate. And then if you need a steady flow of bean crop, then they have to do this. Right? So it's really labor intensive and we haven't even got to like harvesting and extract extraction, right?
4 (16m 42s): Right. So that whole process, also, once the beans extra grow, they have to be picked, They have to go through a nine, six to nine month fermenting and curing process where they heat the bean, they sweat it, they dry it, and just to bring out all the compounds, and then that has to be extracted to get whatever end product you're looking for. So all of that together, plus vanilla is one of, like, as you said, people love vanilla. It's very popular. The demand is really high. So then once you, you have low supply and high demand and the price goes insane. Right? So I mean that's, that's kind of where we're looking at with vanilla.
0 (17m 23s): Yeah. Oh, I just wanna have like a moment of silence for the bees. What kind of, what type of bee was that that you said?
4 (17m 29s): So it's called a meina B, and, and I believe they actually, they're very small. They don't have a stinger, but they, and they live in, I believe they actually live in the ground. And so the Aztecs, the, some of our ancient peoples, they were some of the people who harvest. Th there's a real traditional process with these bees and with making honey, but these bees are what they're specifically only pollinate vanilla. So you know, there, there's, I think the stats statistic is in the last 25 years, there is a 93% reduction in hives.
4 (18m 16s): And sorry, I said the, I said Aztec, I mean the Mayan people. And so, you know, this is, comes from like deforestation, pesticides, less traditional, fewer traditional beekeepers all are affecting this little bee. And then if you grow it somewhere else outside of Mexico, the bees aren't there, they only are in Mexico,
0 (18m 37s): So, Right. Yeah. I wonder, wonder what it is about this specific bee that is, is the only natural pollinator of this plant. That's just so fascinating the way nature works.
4 (18m 48s): Yeah, I know.
0 (18m 50s): Yeah. So obviously we've talked a lot about the difficulties of producing vanilla. I take it the listeners have have caught on by now that the vanilla extract that they're using in the kitchen and they're baking probably is not real vanilla. Tell us more about what we are buying and using in our cooking when we use vanilla extract.
4 (19m 17s): Okay, so vanilla extract is okay there. Yeah, there's a, there's so many products on the market. So when we look at pure vanilla extract, you're getting, the vanilla bean is soaked in a mixture of alcohol and water. And so it, this is called a maceration and the product is soaked in here and then it goes through, especially if you're getting cold extraction, it's soaked for a number of days usually. And then that's kind of strained off. The beans are removed and is strained, and that is pure vanilla baking extract.
4 (19m 58s): And that contains some content, I think it's 35% in order to be qualified as legally as pure vanilla extract, it has to have 35% alcohol. The what most of us use, I have to clarify, I don't use this because I am a purist, but what a lot of people are using is artificial flavoring, vanilla flavoring, which is synthetic compounds of the van or vanilla compound that is in vanilla, the constituent, it's a either ethyl or methyl vanilla that's that they're basically using. So it's just a bunch of, plus a whole bunch of other like gross chemicals in there.
4 (20m 41s): It's fake, it's just artificial flavoring that most people are using. So it's not actually real vanilla at all. And there's just so many different products. Also when we look at aromatherapy too, that maybe we can get into in a bit, but that's basically what people are using is just artificial flavoring.
0 (21m 2s): Yeah. Those tricky scientists, they found, they found all the ways. One thing, one fun fact that I happen to know about a lot of vanilla extracts or imitation vanillas on the market, most of it comes from what you were just saying, this sort of petro chemically based lab created concoctions. Some of it also happens to be derived from the beaver butt or beaver anus gland. So that's a fun fact to to point out to your friends.
4 (21m 36s): Yes, exactly. Which is pretty gross when you're putting that in your food. Right. And then even if you're looking at, like, we go back to the, the cost of things. When you look at vanilla, pure vanilla extract for baking, I mean, it's expensive and especially if you like to buy things that are organic, it's ex very expensive. So if you're getting it for like a couple of bucks, it's, it's anal gland stuff. Okay.
0 (22m 1s): Yeah. It's, But juice.
4 (22m 4s): Yes.
0 (22m 9s): Oh, it's too good, too Good. Well that brings up a few questions I wanna dive into the uses of, I'm just gonna call it vanilla essential oil. And I think you, you all know what I'm talking about. We're talking about a properly derived b botanically based oily product that you can use like an essential oil. Can you use that in cooking to get the, a similar result as you would with a vanilla extract?
4 (22m 40s): So, okay, so, and if you're getting the, the olio resin, because there's a difference between the oio resin and the absolute, and there's a difference between how they're produced, it depends on the solvent. So in most, most of the time the OEO resin comes from this vanilla extract that you would actually use in your baking, the pure vanilla extract. So we get the oola oio resin from the same process. So we soak the beans in alcohol and water, and when it's being used for food, you're using a food based alcohol.
4 (23m 21s): So it's either grain based or corn based, or it's, as I, as you said with the young living product, I think you said that one is sugar be based alcohol. So they soak that and then what happens with the food extract, you would just strain it and there's your extract with olio resin, they actually take that alcohol out. It's removed, usually evaporated out. And what you're left with is this kind of thicker, the oio resin, which is sort of a thicker product. It's kind of semi-soft product. And so if you were, the, the question becomes what is the solvent, right?
4 (24m 5s): So if you're, if it's a food based solvent, there's always gonna be some solvent left. And if it's a food based solvent, you probably have low risk in actually using it as, as in food. But they're not the same product. Right? The, the you, you're, you're gonna have the vanilla in there that the, the compounds that actually enhance flavor and smell are gonna be the same, but it's not exactly the same, right? Because with the extract you're gonna have all that extra alcohol. It's, it's just a different product. As I said, it, it's gonna depend on that solvent because there is always, no matter how much we try and filter out the product or the the solvent, there's always gonna be some left there.
4 (24m 55s): So if you're ingesting it, you know that that is important. So if someone is, like, when we look at absolutes, we're using things like hexane, some people still use like benzene to to, to make these products. But if you're using a petrochemical based alcohol, then I don't know that you wanna really be ingesting that. Like it's pretty unsafe. Right. I mean, I think most products are gonna say also that it's not for ingestion, it usually is an aroma product, like a fragrance product. So it
0 (25m 33s): Depends. So are you saying it's probably better to stick with the absolutes if you are to use it in baking or just avoid the OEO resins and the absolutes in general and go with a pure essential, pure vanilla extract
4 (25m 47s): For, So definitely avoid an absolute, because there's a vanilla O oio resin, there's a vanilla absolute, there's a vanilla CO2 extract the, absolutely, totally avoid the absolute, the o resin. Maybe if it's made, if it's been processed with food based alcohol, if it's been like ISO propo or something like that, Like you don't, you're not gonna be ingesting that. But generally, I mean just use baking, like pure baking extract, that's what it's meant for, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like there's no need to make it all complicated.
0 (26m 27s): Awesome. Well, so I'd love to discuss some of the benefits to using an o, an OEO resin or an absolute or CO2 extract as far as the therapeutic benefits go. Can you talk about that some?
4 (26m 43s): Okay, so yeah, so the, the, the, a lot of it really just depends on the processing, so a c or two extract. Okay. Let's back up a little bit. I'm gonna talk, go into a little bit about how we make, we get these products a little bit more. So we talked about the ilio resin being it's extracted from the, the, the alcohol soaked in alcohol situation. The absolute goes through a a lot more processing. So we gotta dump those beans into a drum and they get heated up with like, we add a hexa to it and we heated up with a little bit of heat, which creates sort of like a resinoid.
4 (27m 27s): And then we take that out and we, I'll wash it with alcohol to separate the compounds and then the alcohol's evaporated off. And what you're left with is this absolute, the CO2 extract is where you take the same bean and you usually they would chop it up into small, tiny pieces and you pass liquid carbon dioxide through that. And once you bring it up to pressure, it reaches this super critical state where it has the density of liquid, but it's kind of both liquid and gas. It's sort of like this in between state and at that state it acts as a solvent. And so then once you bring that back down, it turns the, the carbon dioxide goes back to gas and it dissipates.
4 (28m 13s): So the end product can be potentially really clean and it's fast and it's gentle and you capture a lot of that sometimes, like for some products at a steam distillation can't get. So the difference here is sort of the, the CO2 extract potentially can be a very clean product. The absolute is probably gonna have a little bit more, what's the word I'm looking for? Solvent in it. And olio resin is just also gonna have a little bit more solvent in it as well. And so when it comes to therapeutic use, the oil resin is gonna be a little bit thicker product.
4 (28m 56s): It doesn't dilute as well and carry oil, it can, you just, you have, it does dilute, you just have to really shake it up and this is likely gonna clog up your diffuser a little bit. And then the CO2 extract is probably gonna be a little bit more solvent free, not technically totally solvent free, but pretty close to it. So the compounds are, are, are pretty much the same, it's just how we're getting them out. So we're gonna use them for, yeah, as I said, the main compound is vanilla and we're gonna use that to, for calming, it's, it's kind of the most we know, it's that warm calming smell that makes us think of like cookies, right?
4 (29m 50s): So it's very calming. It has, you know, effects on the mood and it can affect, it kind of works on your, your, some of your receptors. And so it can be calming and it's often used as a aromatherapy fixative, especially for, for smell sense. So if you're wanting to make like a perfume for example, then you would use it sort of as a base note, a fixative to kind of hold, bring everything and hold it together in his synergy so it can really help with mood and stress related conditions, maybe nervous tension, restlessness, that kind of thing.
0 (30m 32s): Awesome. Well that, that's so de thank you for being so detailed. I think that's really, really helpful to hear all of that. I wanna ask before we go to our closing question, what's just your personal favorite use or uses of vanilla?
4 (30m 48s): So I use vanilla. I make a lot of my own chemical free, if you can say that's not really chemical free because essential oils, I have chemicals in them. But in this, in the terms, you know, in the sense of of science, but I make my own sense. So a little perfumes. And I love vanilla, as I said, it was a really wonderful fixative and adds a really nice base note to a, a scent that I would like. So I, I often use it in that way and I use it a lot for emotional stress related situations. So because it can interact with some of our receptors in our brain and, and it can infect the mood and that's kind of what I use it for the most.
4 (31m 37s): So I diffuse it a lot and then put it in like a roller fragrance that I would wear four scent, personal scent, but also for like that calming emotional impact. Yeah. 0 (31m 53s): Beautiful. I love to put it in my diffuser with orange, just vanilla orange. Oh, such a magical combination. Yes.
4 (32m 2s): I can give you hint if you can get, if you can afford genuine rose essential oil and vanilla together, it's beautiful. But I like a little bit, I actually really love Jasmine. And Jasmine is also an absolute, so Jasmine with a bit of orange, a bit of vanilla, it's very like floral sweet smell with like a warming like yeah that sweet cuz vanilla kinda has a sweet smell to it. So it's, it's just so good. That combination is amazing. Amazing.
0 (32m 42s): Well, Gerald, this has been so much fun. Thank you for deep diving into vanilla with us. Before you go, we always love to ask our guests a couple closing questions. And the first is, what one or two self care practices that you try to do every day to stay healthy?
4 (33m 1s): Yeah, so I think for me it's exercise. I like good 20 to 30 minutes of like moderate intense exercise. So I run, I'm a runner, so I like to do usually about a daily, usually about 5k run that does so much just for how I feel inside my body, but also like mental wellness as well. Best thing I ever did was start exercising every day.
0 (33m 31s): Yeah, good for you. Good for you. And finally, what's just one thing we should all ditch completely and replace with something healthier today?
4 (33m 41s): Okay, so this one might land me in the, the the pool of controversial, but I would have to say supplements. Yeah, I know people are like, what as an herbalist. I, I just see a lot of people taking a lot of supplements, a lot of herbs, a lot of stuff that they're taking because they just kind of read somewhere that they should be taking it, maybe don't understand exactly how it impacts the body or how it personally impacts their health. And so I'm a fan of good quality supplement, especially when that works.
4 (34m 21s): But I'm also a fan of intentional use. I think we should get our nutrients from our food first and then only take the supplements that we absolutely need. Controversial maybe, but that's what I think little
0 (34m 34s): Bit, but it makes sense now, really. I mean you can't treat your health like a one size fits all and you have to be intentional about what you're putting in your body. I, I love treating food like medicine for sure. And having that be your primary source and then getting to know your body. There's so many amazing tools now to get to know your body and what you need, like with the genetic testing or DNA or home labs, those kinds of things. And that can be a really great way to approach the supplement world as well, which can be very overwhelming.
4 (35m 8s): Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that there's just a lot of, one thing that I, I'm very passionate about, especially when we, when it comes to herbs and oils, there's just so much wrong information and out there and people have good intentions about what they're putting out there in the world for others to read. But there's just a lot of stuff that's like, you know, if you took, if you take that herb for, you know, a long time, you could be impacting other things. Not necessarily that it's bad, but it can throw things outta balance, for example. And so I just think we have to be way more intentional Yeah. About the ones that we're taking and like also, do we need to be taking like a handful of pills every day?
4 (35m 51s): If you're like typically a healthy person, this is where I get, I kind of get like, ah, I don't know guys.
0 (35m 59s): Well Cheryl, this has been so much fun and I really appreciate you coming on and what's the best way for people to connect with you, be a part of your world?
4 (36m 9s): Thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed my time here for sure. Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram. I actually took like a really long break from Instagram. I, it's so frustrated with, with social media, so I, but I'm back so I'm like restarting everything. You, Yeah, you can find me at Cheryl the herbalist. You can learn about aromatherapy and herbalism on my podcast called The Aroma Therapist, which you can, wherever you get your podcast, you can find me. And then I'm also online@thearomatherapist.ca and if you head over there, you can get a free essential oil safety guide.
0 (36m 49s): Sounds great. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom with us here on the Essential Oil Revolution. We appreciate you.
4 (36m 57s): Thank you so much. 0 (36m 60s): The essential oil revolution is created by me, Samantha Lee Wright, thanks so much for tuning in. I wanna give a very, very special thank you to my assistant and twin sister Michelle McGregor, who is getting married this weekend. We are so excited here at the Essential Oil Revolution to be celebrating her love of Nick Liberatory. Congratulations Michelle and Nick, and thank you for all the hard work you do to pull off this show week after week. Thank you for tuning in and if you wanna go the extra mile and help other people find this show, the best way you can do that is by sharing it directly with your friends and leaving us a rating and review wherever you get your podcast.
0 (37m 51s): We'll catch you here next week. In the meantime, keep on learning, keep on discovering, and most importantly, keep on treating yourself well. You are worth it.