Why Is Real Vanilla So Expensive?

Real vanilla is much more expensive than synthetic vanilla. Learn about the delicate orchid that vanilla comes from and why most vanilla flavoring is synthetic in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren bog obam Here a trip down the Baking Aisle.
Can Land. Budget shoppers in a serious quandary. Why pay
nearly twenty dollars for four ounces that's a hundred and
nineteen milli liters of pure vanilla extract when you can
get the same amount of imitation vanilla flavor for less

(00:23):
than five bucks. Why does real vanilla cost an arm
and a leg. There are a few good reasons. It's
a classic case of supply and demand. Much of the
world's supply of vanilla beans about is grown in just
one place, the island of Madagascar and nearby Reunion. The
last few years have seen these islands ravaged by multiple

(00:45):
storms like Cyclone and awo in, wrecking thousands of plants
and driving prices up to more than six hundred dollars
per kilo or around three hundred per pound, which is
ten times what the prices were a few years previous.
Although twenty nineteen prices proved to be more stable than
the fluctuating rates of was forecast to seat production reduced

(01:07):
by which could send costs shooting upward again, but that
was predicted before the COVID nineteen pandemic happened, which seems
to be sending prices lower. The other major contribution to
sky hive and ella prices is the fact that the
plant is just difficult to grow. Species of vanilla are
members of the orchid family. The bean is the orchids fruit.

(01:31):
It's only able to grow ten to twenty degrees north
or south of the equator. The flowers grow on evergreen,
climbing stems. The blooming season lasts just a couple of months,
with a mere handful of fragile, green, white, or yellow
flowers blossoming each day, and each flower only opening for
pollination for one single morning before they wither and fall

(01:53):
off the plant. They're so delicate that they're only known
pollinators in the wild are species of tiny bees and
birds that evolved alongside them in their native Central American habitat.
So basically, if you're not growing vanilla in Mexico, and
again most vanilla isn't, you have to hand pollinate. The
hand pollination process is difficult and requires an experienced person

(02:16):
to perform it successfully. Typically it's done by farmers who
have been in the vanilla growing game for generations. The
process doesn't end once the beans are harvested either. Freshly
harvested vanilla pods are actually pretty bland. The crop must
be cooked, sweat dried, and cured in a truly prostincty
operation that prevents rotting and allows a number of enzymatic

(02:39):
and friendly bacterial processes to develop some two hundred and
fifty flavor compounds that we love about real vanilla. From
getting to end growth to export, the whole shebang takes
a solid year, and that is why vanilla is the
second costliest spice in the world, after only saffron. Ironically,

(03:00):
many farmers in Madagascar had moved away from growing this
labor intensive crop before Cycloninao made landfall because of low
prices for the product. At the same time, consumer interest
in real vanilla had started to increase, further exacerbating the
supply problem. So is real vanilla worth the price? In baking?

(03:22):
Vanilla does a lot more than just make something taste vanilla.
With all those flavor compounds, it can enhance other flavors
in sometimes unexpected ways. That said, when a recipe calls
for pure vanilla extract, can be tempting to sidestep the
authentic but pricey version in favor of the much cheaper
imitation stuff, which is typically lab synthesized vanillen. Vanilla is

(03:44):
one of those many taste and aroma compounds that's produced
when you cure vanilla beans, but there are lots of
other ways to get the same molecule. You can use
yeast or bacteria to ferment an oil from cloves or
an acid from rice bran fed. One of those things
be specialized and often proprietary microorganisms basically poop vanilla. Those

(04:07):
sort of products are considered natural vanillen that you can
also heat and pressure treat an alcohol that comes from
spruce trees to produce vanillen. As of the nineteen nineties,
a lot of the world's vanillen was actually a byproduct
of the wood pulp and paper industries. Finally, you can
synthesize vanilla in a lab using an oil that's a
byproduct of the petroleum industry. Those two, the wood pulp

(04:31):
and petroleum versions, are considered artificial vanillen. The petroleum version
is the cheapest of a lot by far, especially since
wooden paper industries worked to reduce their waste in the
two thousands However, if you've heard that some artificial vanilla
flavoring comes from the butt glands of beavers, yes, this
is a rumor that's incorrect on multiple levels. First Off,

(04:54):
any product derived from an animal would be called natural. Secondly,
while it is is true that beavers do produce a
sort of vanilla's scented substance in a gland that's near
the base of their tails, it's not from their anus,
and it's not actually financially viable to milk beaver glands
at a rate that would satisfy the world's interest in
vanilla flavoring. The gland secretion, by the way, is called castoreum,

(05:19):
and beavers use it to mark their territory and to
impress humans by spelling just absolutely lovely. It did see
some use in the eighteen hundreds as a perfume ingredient
and food additive, during the time when beaver fur was
all the rage in fashion and beavers were being hunted
in large numbers. It still shows up the fragrance industries sometimes,
but it's expensive and uncommon at any rate. The real

(05:42):
vanilla is rare. The vanilla flavoring used in foods we eat,
like vanilla ice cream is synthetic. If you can afford
to splurge on a few beans, it can be really worthwhile.
Though there are simple recipes online for extracting lots of
flavor from them. You can even scrape the time reflect
black seeds from the pods for use in a special recipe,

(06:03):
and then reuse the fleshy husks multiple times, drawing out
flavor by steeping them in liquid or storing them in
granulated sugar. Today's episode was written by Aliya Hoyt and
produced by Tyler Klang. To learn more about vanilla, check
out my podcast about food science and history. It's called Savor.

(06:24):
And for more on this and lots of other not
so vanilla topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Green
Stuff is a production of my heart Radio. For more
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