Cinnamon: The Two Barks

The problem this book solves

Most people in the English-speaking world have never tasted cinnamon. They have tasted cassia, which is a different bark from a different tree, sold under the same word because the law allows it.

That would be a footnote, except for two things. Cassia carries coumarin, which stresses the liver at high intakes, at a level Ceylon cinnamon does not approach. And cinnamon is one of the very few kitchen spices that people genuinely take daily and deliberately, in spoon-sized amounts, because they read it helps their blood sugar.

A habit built on the wrong bark is the one place this distinction stops being trivia.

What makes it different

Every claim carries an evidence grade, shown inline, so you can see the strength of the support without leaving the sentence:

• S — Strong: supported by human clinical studies
• P — Preliminary: early or small human data
• V — Lab: cell or animal work, mechanism only
• T — Traditional: historical use, not clinically proven

Cinnamon is an unusual case for that grading, because its best-evidenced fact is a risk rather than a benefit. The coumarin work is solid. The blood-sugar work is real but modest and inconsistent, and it is almost always reported as though the trial dose and a sprinkle on toast were the same thing.

This book quotes the dose, every time — and never tells you what yours should be.