How A 1947 Decision By American Spice Companies Created A Generation Of Prediabetics
The buried history of how true Ceylon cinnamon disappeared from American kitchens, and what it cost three generations of women.
In the spring of 1947, McCormick & Company's purchasing executives faced a problem.
Ceylon cinnamon, the variety their grandparents' generation had sold in tin canisters since the late 1800s, had become commercially unsustainable. The supply chain ran through a single island in the Indian Ocean. The peelers who harvested it, members of Sri Lanka's hereditary Salagama caste, took five to seven years to learn the craft. A skilled peeler produced four to five kilograms of dried cinnamon per day from roughly fifty stems. The labor was specialized, generational, and expensive.
Across the Pacific, in southern China and what is now Vietnam, a different cinnamon tree grew in commercial volume. Cassia, technically Cinnamomum cassia and its regional cousins, produced a darker, harder, more pungent bark at a fraction of the cost. The flavor was not identical. It was sharper, hotter, less complex. But to the average American consumer in 1947, who had never tasted true Ceylon cinnamon side by side with Cassia, the difference was imperceptible.
The decision American spice companies made in the late 1940s and early 1950s changed the contents of every American spice rack within twenty years.
By 1965, true Ceylon cinnamon had been almost entirely replaced on American shelves.
The replacement was never disclosed to consumers. The FDA, then in its second decade as a unified regulatory agency, never required spice manufacturers to label which species of cinnamon they were selling. To this day, in April of 2026, the FDA still does not.
The single word "Cinnamon" on a McCormick tin, a Costco bag, or a Trader Joe's organic blend can refer to either species. American consumers have no way to tell from the label which one they are bringing home.
This article is about what that swap has cost over the last seventy-eight years.
The Coumarin Question Europe Has Been Asking Since 2006
In June 2006, Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) published Stellungnahme Nr. 044/2006, a public risk statement that received almost no coverage in the United States. The statement addressed Cassia cinnamon's coumarin content.
Coumarin is a naturally occurring compound found in the bark of cassia cinnamon at significantly higher concentrations than in true Ceylon cinnamon. In Cassia, coumarin levels typically range from 2,100 to 4,400 milligrams per kilogram of bark, with some samples tested as high as 9,090 milligrams per kilogram. In Ceylon, coumarin levels are typically below 200 micrograms per kilogram. The ratio between the two species can exceed 1,000 to 1.
In 2006, BfR established a Tolerable Daily Intake of coumarin at 0.1 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. For a typical adult, this translates to approximately 6 to 8 milligrams of coumarin per day. A single half teaspoon of supermarket Cassia cinnamon, used daily, can exceed this threshold.
The BfR did not call for cinnamon to be banned. The agency called for clearer labeling, lower coumarin limits in finished food products, and consumer education. By 2008, the European Union followed with Aromenverordnung 1334/2008, which established maximum coumarin levels in cinnamon-containing baked goods, breakfast cereals, and desserts.
In November 2006, BfR and Germany's Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) issued a joint statement specifically about cinnamon supplements being marketed for blood sugar effects. The statement classified those products as unauthorized medicines requiring formal regulatory approval.
In the United States, no parallel regulatory action was taken. The FDA did not establish a coumarin limit for cinnamon. The agency did not require species labeling. The agency did not warn consumers.
To this day, the United States remains the largest developed economy without coumarin regulations on supermarket cinnamon.
The 2024 Lead Scandal That Almost Nobody Heard About
In September 2023, a North Carolina pediatrician noticed elevated blood lead levels in two toddlers from the same family. The investigation that followed revealed something that should have been a national news story but was instead a regional product recall.
WanaBana, a brand of cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches sold at Dollar Tree, Walmart, and other major retailers, was contaminated with extraordinarily high levels of lead. By November 2023, the FDA had traced the contamination to ground cinnamon imported from Ecuador, processed by a company called Negasmart and a subsidiary processor named Carlos Aguilera.
When the FDA tested cinnamon directly from Aguilera's processing facility, the results were startling. Samples contained lead at concentrations of 5,110 parts per million and 2,270 parts per million. The proposed Codex Alimentarius limit for lead in bark spices is 2.5 parts per million. Aguilera's cinnamon contained more than 2,000 times that level.
In January 2024, the FDA disclosed an additional finding. The contamination was not accidental. Alongside the lead, the cinnamon samples contained chromium, suggesting the presence of lead chromate, an industrial yellow pigment. The pigment had been added deliberately, almost certainly to enhance the cinnamon's color and weight, increasing its commercial value.
By October 2024, the Centers for Disease Control had documented 566 cases of children across 43 states with elevated blood lead linked to the contamination. WanaBana USA filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May 2024.
Through October 2025, the FDA expanded the recall list five times to cover more than sixteen ground cinnamon brands sold under names including Spice Class, Shahzada, Marcum, Supreme Tradition, Swad, Jiva Organic, and others.
One critical detail emerged in the FDA's investigation. The raw cinnamon sticks imported from Sri Lanka tested clean. The lead chromate adulteration occurred on the way to the United States, in Ecuador. The Ceylon cinnamon supply chain that originated the product was uncontaminated. The processing supply chain that ground and packaged it was where the corruption happened.
The lead scandal of 2024 was a supply chain failure, not a Ceylon cinnamon problem. But because of how American spice products are labeled, almost no consumer could tell the difference.
Where The Science Actually Stands
The most cited study on cinnamon and blood sugar metabolism is Khan et al., published in Diabetes Care in December 2003. The study reported that Cassia cinnamon supplementation in 60 Pakistani Type 2 diabetic patients resulted in fasting glucose reductions of 18 to 29 percent over 40 days.
In August 2025, twenty-two years after publication, the American Diabetes Association issued an Expression of Concern regarding the Khan study. The ADA's Panel on Ethical Scientific Programs identified statistically significant differences in baseline measurements between the study's randomized groups, raising concerns about possible selection bias. The study has not been retracted, but its conclusions are now formally questioned by its own publisher.
Subsequent research has been more measured. In 2006, researchers at the University of Hannover in Germany published Mang et al. in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study, conducted on 79 Type 2 diabetic patients over 4 months, reported approximately 10 percent fasting glucose reduction with cinnamon extract supplementation. The study did not find significant change in HbA1c.
In 2013, Allen et al. published a meta-analysis of ten randomized controlled trials covering 543 patients in the Annals of Family Medicine. The analysis found average reductions in fasting glucose of 24.6 mg/dL, total cholesterol of 15.6 mg/dL, LDL of 9.4 mg/dL, and triglycerides of 29.6 mg/dL. The analysis did not find significant change in HbA1c.
The picture that emerges from twenty years of cinnamon research is nuanced. Effects on fasting glucose and lipids are real and statistically significant. Effects on long-term glycemic markers like HbA1c are not consistently demonstrated. Cinnamon is not a treatment. It is a contributing factor in metabolic support, alongside chromium, zinc, dietary changes, exercise, and clinical care.
The American Diabetes Association has not added cinnamon to its 2026 Standards of Care.
The European Union, on February 2, 2022, granted Ceylon Cinnamon a Protected Geographical Indication designation through Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/144. This was Sri Lanka's first PGI ever. The designation places true Ceylon cinnamon on the same regulatory tier as Champagne and Parmigiano Reggiano. The specifications include a coumarin content limit of less than 0.4 grams per kilogram, a level Cassia cannot meet.
The American Cost
Three generations of American women have now lived through the era of the cinnamon swap. Their grandmothers, born in the 1920s and 1930s, had access to true Ceylon cinnamon during their formative cooking years. Their mothers, born in the 1940s and 1950s, witnessed the transition to Cassia. Their daughters, born in the 1960s and 1970s, have spent their entire adult lives consuming Cassia almost exclusively.
The same generations have lived through the rise of American Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, less than 1 percent of American adults had diagnosed diabetes. By 2024, the figure was 12 percent of the total population, with an additional 38 percent classified as prediabetic. Among adults aged 65 to 79, the diagnosed diabetes rate is 28.8 percent.
Cinnamon is not the cause of this trajectory. The post-1970 industrialization of American food, the rise of high-fructose corn syrup, the introduction of ultra-processed foods, the doubling of per-capita sugar consumption, and the displacement of traditional diet patterns are all primary drivers. No single supplement reverses these trends.
But cinnamon's quiet substitution is a small piece of a much larger pattern. American food companies, throughout the second half of the twentieth century, made dozens of cost-driven substitutions that consumers were never told about. Crisco for lard. High-fructose corn syrup for cane sugar. Hydrogenated vegetable oils for animal fats. Artificial colors for natural ones, many of which were quietly phased out only after RFK Jr.'s HHS announced petroleum-based dye removal in April 2025.
The Cassia for Ceylon swap is one piece of a much larger story about what American consumers were not told.
What Is Being Done About It
Several smaller spice and supplement companies have, in recent years, begun importing true Ceylon cinnamon directly from named single-estate sources in Sri Lanka. These products are typically more expensive than supermarket Cassia, often by a factor of three to five. They are also typically sold with explicit species labeling and, in some cases, third-party laboratory verification.
One brand that has emerged in this space is Cinsaye, a US-based supplement company sourcing single-estate Ceylon cinnamon from Galle, Sri Lanka. The company manufactures a softgel formulation that pairs concentrated Ceylon cinnamon extract with chromium and zinc, the two minerals the FDA recognizes for normal blood sugar metabolism support. Each pouch carries a QR code linking to the lot-specific certificate of analysis from an ISO-accredited laboratory, with results published for lead, cadmium, coumarin, and DNA verification of the Cinnamomum verum species.
The company's positioning is, in part, a response to the FDA's silence. Where federal regulators have not required species labeling or contamination disclosure, Cinsaye publishes its own data. Whether this approach will become an industry standard or remain a niche premium offering is unclear.
What is clear is that, for the first time in seventy-eight years, American consumers have access to a verified source of the cinnamon their grandmothers' generation cooked with. Whether they choose to use it, and whether they understand why the choice matters, will depend on whether the story documented above ever reaches a wider audience.
The history is settled. The science is incomplete but suggestive. The regulatory gap remains.
The next question is whether enough American families will care.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Individual results may vary. Consult your physician before starting any dietary supplement. This page is an advertisement and not an editorial article. The story depicted above is based on publicly available information and may not represent all perspectives on the topic.