1Hey, it's Jay.
2Are there foods that remind you of special memories?
3For me, it's french toast.
4I can remember the excitement I felt watching my dad toast the bread and warm up the syrup.
5Then he'd get out the ingredient that made it extra special:
6a dash of cinnamon.
7So good!
8Someone named Stella has a question about cinnamon.
9Let's give Stella a call now.
10Hi, Jay.
11Hi, Stella.
12I have a question for you.
13How's cinnamon made?
14That's a great question!
15You've probably smelled or tasted cinnamon before.
16It's the star ingredient in a cinnamon roll's ooey-gooey filling.
17It's what makes that brown swirl in a cinnamon raisin bagel
18or the brown flecks on top of this oatmeal.
19A touch of cinnamon gives many other foods their delicious taste too.
20You can call cinnamon a seasoning or a spice.
21It's something people add to foods to give them a particular flavor.
22It's tricky to describe a flavor with words,
23but I'd say cinnamon is sweet and just a little bit spicy.
24Eating it gives me a warm feeling,
25even when the weather is cold.
26You already know that most of the foods we eat come from plants and animals.
27And so do many of the things we use to flavor our foods.
28For instance, maybe you've seen these packets that come with pizza.
29Crushed red pepper is a spicy seasoning made from peppers that grow on pepper plants.
30You can see dried-up bits of the pepper's red skin and its flat, round seeds.
31Or check this out:
32this is oregano,
33another seasoning people sprinkle on pizza.
34If you take a closer look,
35you can tell it's pieces of dried leaves from an oregano plant.
36You might not guess it, but cinnamon comes from a plant too:
37a tree, to be specific.
38Looking at this dusty powder, it's hard to tell what part of a tree it's from.
39So let's go back one step.
40To make cinnamon powder,
41you need to grind up one of these:
42a cinnamon stick.
43But don't let the name fool you.
44It's not like the kind of stick you'd find from a tree branch.
45It's more like a curled-up tube,
46and it didn't grow in this shape.
47Still, you might find some clues here.
48Take a close look.
49What do you notice about the cinnamon stick?
50What part of a tree do you think cinnamon comes from?
51Now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss.
52Okay, ready?
53Trees can have lots of different parts, like leaves, flowers, and roots.
54So which part does cinnamon come from?
55To find out, let's take a look at a farm where cinnamon trees are grown,
56like this one.
57See all those parts growing at the bottom?
58This farmer is going to cut some of them off.
59Next, this person shaves away the bark.
60A tree's bark is kind of like armor.
61It grows on the outside, protecting the tree's inside parts.
62On this cut branch,
63you can see the bark on the outside surrounding the wood that's inside.
64And if you look closely, there's a darker ring here.
65That's a layer of inner bark.
66That thin layer is what this person wants to get to,
67so they have to be extra careful not to cut too deep.
68Once the inner bark is revealed,
69it's gently sliced and peeled away from the wood.
70The long strips get packed with smaller bits,
71then placed on racks where the bark dries out and curls up.
72Now it's ready to be cut into cinnamon sticks you saw before
73or ground up into cinnamon powder.
74So, cinnamon comes from the inner bark of cinnamon trees.
75That's ground up tree bark being baked into treats.
76who knew bark could be so tasty?
77And let me show you another tree with bark we can eat.
78Those reddish-brown sections on the trunks are where bark has been cut away
79to make a spice that some people call cassia.
80Cassia has a sweet and spicy flavor that's very similar to cinnamon.
81In fact, even if you've never heard of cassia before,
82it's very likely you have tasted it.
83That's because in places like the United States,
84the cassia sold in stores is usually just called cinnamon.
85That's right, there's more than one kind of cinnamon.
86The cinnamon we eat is really several varieties that come from different trees.
87Each variety has a slightly different flavor,
88but they're all sweet, spicy, and delicious.
89So in summary, cinnamon is made from the bark of specific trees.
90Whether it's bark harvested from cinnamon trees or cassia cinnamon trees,
91the process takes lots of skillful scraping, careful cutting, and patient drying,
92to create the sticks and ground-up powders that we use to flavor foods.
93It's important to remember that only a few kinds of trees produce the cinnamon spices we use.
94So you should not go around tasting trees.
95Bark from most trees isn't tasty and it could even make you sick.
96But you can uncover the many other plants that add flavor to our food.
97The next time you're at the grocery store,
98take a look at the spices and seasonings
99to see if you can figure out which ones come from plants
100and which parts of plants were used.
101Some have clues in their names,
102like sesame seeds, which are seeds,
103or bay leaves, which are leaves.
104The ground-up spices might be trickier,
105but with a little detective work,
106you may discover you're eating bits of dried-up bark, flowers, berries, and roots at every meal.
107That's all for this week's question.
108Thanks, Stella, for asking it!