Crumbs with Legs and Wings: What's Hiding Inside Cinnamon Sticks?

Cinnamon is not a fruit or a dried tree branch. It's simply the bark of the cinnamon tree, which grows mainly in India, specifically for the use of its bark. When the bark thickens, it falls off the tree and gradually dries completely. Whole cinnamon is marketed to us in two forms: one is flat (simple) cinnamon, which looks like a slightly curved rectangular sheet. This cinnamon is cheaper. In contrast, there is a type of cinnamon marketed as a rounded stick with both ends closed toward the center of the circle. Of course, the more rounded and longer the cinnamon's shape, the more expensive it will be, and indeed, this is how cinnamon is priced today. The price of a five-centimeter cinnamon stick, for example, is not comparable to one that is twenty centimeters long, and the flatter the cinnamon, the much cheaper it will be. For this reason, cinnamon intended for grinding into cinnamon powder is exclusively the simple cinnamon.

Thus, cinnamon is actually a type of dried tree bark, which from the moment it begins to dry until it falls to the ground, attracts many types of insects, like all other tree barks. For example, we can observe the bark of pine or palm trees, which are more familiar to us, falling from the tree, and notice a variety of insect species. Moreover, from the time the bark begins to dry on the tree, and even after the bark falls from the tree, until it is marketed to us, many days pass, sometimes even more than three years (!), and it is certainly natural that this bark will develop various types of storage pests. The most common are book lice, which appear as small black crumbs, which often even flicker and run. These insects look to build their dwelling place in hiding spots, and the more closed the stick is, the more space they have.

Different from cinnamon sticks is raw cinnamon, intended for the ground cinnamon industry. While still in its raw form, insects have no hiding places, so it is easier to clean, and even during the process, insects fall off by themselves, and therefore when they come for grinding, they are not considered infested. Therefore, all kosher certification bodies approve them for fine grinding like flour, as they are, even without washing, because even if we worry that there might have been some insect, it is ground and nullified, and is not defined as a distinct creature.

With cinnamon sticks, the matter is completely different, as by nature the stick is rounded and closed, trapping inside it the types of insects without the ability to exit. For illustration, if you take a cinnamon stick and tap its end over a white surface, it is very likely that you will see small insects crawling and running, and even if the insects are dead, you will notice a considerable amount of crumbs with legs or wings. Even if you wash the cinnamon stick thoroughly under a strong stream of water, it won't help, because after you break it and open it well, all the way to the end of the circle, you will be able to notice signs of many insects that remained inside the curl.

If things are indeed so, it will not be possible to use the cinnamon stick, which is presumed infested, and place it as is, whole, inside food or drink, as that food would be forbidden to eat. True, there are some future developments to enable insect-free cinnamon, but until then we will need to avoid using the product while it's whole.

However, there is a creative solution, provided it is done in a responsible and well-supervised manner, which is to soak the cinnamon stick in water for more than twenty-four hours, until the cinnamon stick opens into a flat sheet form, allowing it to be thoroughly cleaned by scrubbing on both sides. Afterwards, the cinnamon can be returned to its original form, a curled stick, by drying it in an oven which causes the stick to curl again as before. By the way, the results are amazing; the stick retains the same taste and aroma, and it is completely clean.

And why does cinnamon spice require kosher certification, despite being seemingly a completely natural spice? Because spice companies allow themselves to thicken it in any possible way, and as imagination serves them well, starting with various types of twigs, seed shells, and more and more. True, usually flavor or scent additives are not added to cinnamon spice, but this is not a clear consensus among everyone.