Vanillan in candy---safe or not?

I reserve most of my candy eating for special occassions only, and it being both my Dad's birthday and Valentine's Day, I was considering having some of the chocolate covered fruit my brother's bought.  I try to eat very cleanly, and my one brother told me the chocolate has vanillan in it, so I'm wondering if its worth eating it or not.  Is vanillan safe or should it be avoided like HFCS, aspartame, MSG, olestra, sodium nitrite, etc?  hehe..I've googled it myself already, but I haven't found too much about it, so I was wondering if anyone else has any information.  Thanks, and Happy Valentine's Day! 

I've never heard of vanillin being bad for your health, especially if its natural vanillin. Perhaps synthesized vanillin has contaminants that could be harmful, but I'm not sure about that either. 

In general, chocolate is pretty good for you. Lots of antioxidants and such. The darker the chocolate the more antioxidants; however, there's also an increase in saturated fat from the cocoa butter.

I am a chocolate addict. My wife and I are always trying new chocolates. Recently we tried the Equal Exchange chocolate. They have a 68% cocoa bar with pure cocoa nibs that is really great.

My favorite chocolate though is from Chocolatour. They have a really great milk chocolate from Java and the best dark chocolate from the Dominican Republic.

Yeah...I know about the benefits of dark chocolate (I've got a bar of 85% up in my room that I've been slowly finishing for about 2 years), so I'm not afraid of having it or anything, but this new bar that my brother got (dark chocolate with chili peppers in it, weird huh?) has some vanillin as an artficial flavoring, and I was just curious if I should avoid it because the flavoring is unsafe, or that it might strip some of the antioxidents in the chocolate away (like chocolate that's proccessed with alkali).  I dunno...the only candy I EVER eat anymore is very dark chocolate----and thats quite rare.  I was getting pretty upset at dinner time tonight (eating with other people around at home) and I'd at least like to allow myself to enjoy a small dessert food without feeling stupid for letting something nasty into my body. I guess I'll just think about it for now, thanks for your help :)

Vanilla essence comes from vanilla pods , is a relative of the crocus and is therefore a natural food.  Despite being one of the most expensive spices, because it is used in tiny amounts it often appears in commercial confectionery. Synthetic vanilla essence is derived from phenol, is very pure, also used in very small amounts and is approved as safe for consumption.... it's not 'something nasty'.

Do you panic in this way about other foods? 

He might be confusing vanillin with coumarin, which IS a dangerous vanilla-like flavoring and banned in food products. Vanillin is safe.

Original Post by gi-jane:

Synthetic vanilla essence is derived from phenol, is very pure, also used in very small amounts and is approved as safe for consumption.... it's not 'something nasty'.

 I'll add that the reason artificial vanilla extract doesn't taste as good as the natural extract isn't because of contaminants in the artificial extract (which, as gi-jane noted, is very very pure).  It's actually because the natural vanilla extract is less pure, containing small amounts of other flavourful molecules extracted from the vanilla pod.  Purer isn't always better!  :-)

Oh great, thats so relieving to hear...and yeah, gi-jane, I do panic a bit about other foods as well...lately I've been getting a little more panicky about the ingredients in food labels than I was before.  For about 2 years, I've restricted the notoriously worst 12 dangerous ingredients (High Fructose Corn Syrup, Monosodium Glutamate, Sodium Nitrite and Nitrate, Olestra, Aspartame, etc.), but recently I've been reading about some other ingredients that might be just as bad that I HAVE been eating obliviously.  It seems to have been making my anxiety level pretty high these days (no matter how much I'd like to deny it...), and I'm having a hard time feeling good about most of the things I eat because I don't know if their actually healthy.  For example: carageenan and sea salt.  I eat quite a bit of 4% cottage cheese (<--carageenan) and black beans and red kidney beans (<--organic, but prepared with sea salt) for extra protein (trying to gain weight/muscle), and I'm just curious if I should continue to eat them, or just drop them for safer alternatives.  Anyway, thanks for all of your replies, they're very helpful :) 

I think you're going to have to try to calm your anxiety levels around food or you're going to end up with a very narrow diet.   HFCS is not dangerous in small amounts, for example.  Neither is MSG or any of the other ingredients you mention.  People are advised to avoid eating large amounts of salt for prolongued periods but small amounts of salt are necessary in the diet.  Cottage cheese and kidney beans with salt in are in no way 'unsafe'

I think your concept of 'risk' needs seriously revising.  You can eat a salty diet, for example, for 60 or 70 years and provided your weight is healthy and you take regular exercise you may never have a problem with blood-pressure.  If you have a couple of slices of bacon a week, the nitrates in it will make no difference to your health.  

Why don't you talk to your doctor about your anxiety and also talk to them about your fears about these ingredients?  It could be symptomatic of a more general problem.

I'd like to say that I don't really care about how limited my diet is as long as it doesn't make me sick, but that would be hypocritical because I'm quite certain that it is these limitations that have caused my menstrual cycle to cease, which I know is unhealthy.  I also know that everything is fine in moderation, but I have a hard time moderating things: I either eat it or restrict it entirely.  It may not be the best thing, but I prefer to eat foods in a very consistent manner, where I feel that I am not consistently wasting any money and calories on food that I perceive as unhealthy (heavily processesed, lacking in nutrients, etc).  When my parents know that I will eat something, they tend to buy it in BULK amounts, so I really want to make sure that they aren't wasting their money.  When I was younger, they knew I liked wheat bread and peanut butter for lunch, so most of my lunches through grade school consisted of 2 pieces of wheat bread (made with HFCS) with peanut butter (not natural, so it had hydrogenated oils and more corn syrup in it), 2 chocolate milks from the school (not sure about the ingredients, but they couldn't have been good..) and the occassional tasty-cake (total empty calories filled with sugar, HFCS, etc.) from my dad or a friend.  Dinner's were usually healthier b/c my dad made them (usually some kind of poultry and vegetables) but sometimes he'd bread the chicken, make instant mashed potatoes, make lots of white flour pastas, etc.  And then there was lots of ice cream, and doughnuts that my dad would take me and my brothers to get afterschool almost everyday.  I ate this way consistently because it was what was available and I didn't know any better.  I'm older and smarter now, so I take full responsibility for what I alllow myself to consume, thus I want to be making the right decisions. 

Thanks if you got through the lenghty post, and thanks again for your responses.

Your posts are quite typical of obsessive compulsive behaviors. In uneasy times - most of us search for something we can "control". For women - the thing most often picked to control is their diet. If you can - please talk to someone about your "obsession" -preferably someone who specializes in eating disorders and obsessive compulsive behaviors. Unless you have a REALLY good family doctor - they won't know how to help you and will send you to a specialist anyway. Good luck to you!

Original Post by kate777:

 I either eat it or restrict it entirely. 

 You have a problem, unfortunately and you need to talk to a doctor about it.   There's 'healthy eating', there are 'fussy eaters' and then there's 'unhealthy food obsession' and I think you've tipped over into the latter.   There's even an eating disorder called 'orthorexia nervosa' which is characterised by an excessive focus on eating healthy foods.

If you have no periods that means you're either underweight, undernourished, overexercising or your body is otherwise stressed.  So please talk to your parents and make an appointment to see your doctor.