I’ll try to be brief, cos we’ve now established that the focus of this thread is actually on the sugar not the corn, and i don’t want to go too far off-topic.
Rather than post another link to a corn allergy website (I’ve already posted one such, and will just add that every such site I’ve ever visited lists vanillin as a source of "hidden corn’ . And i very much doubt that they all could get that wrong, so admittedly took their word for it. I don’t think that really counts as an “unsubstantiated leap” on my part though. It just isn’t humanly possible to do your own research on the lot. IMO) I’ve now looked though some relevant articles on food science and manufacturing processes, hoping that you’ll find these more convincing.(being that little bit closer to the horse’s mouth) This one is rather dated (2010) but has the advantage of putting corn and vanillin on the same pictorial diagram (third page down) , which clearly shows that vanillin can produced from corn (via sucrose) . You might notice that corn is the cheapest, most widely available, of the raw ingredients featured? Where i think the article might be a bit outdated is in saying that the alternative ferulic acid pathway utilises rice as a raw ingredient . As you see, ferulic acid, too can now be extracted from corn (maize). Indeed , corn is utilized in an ever-increasing number of food and pharma products.
It looks like the wikipedia entry is seriously dated re, the wood pulp , according to this 1997 article. " Today, however, whilst vanillin production from lignin is still practiced in Norway and a few other areas, all North American facilities using this process have closed, primarily for environmental reasons."
But, anyway, I think the following quote would be of more interest to most readers of this thread:
“The big difference between the prices of natural and synthetic vanillin, the increased demand for “natural” and “healthy” flavors have stimulated a great interest of the flavorings industry to produce natural vanillin by bioconversion from other natural sources.”
(from …sorry, posted wrong link…hunting for right one. Probably this Microbial Production of Biovanillin An interesting and relevant paper anyway)
…a reminder that so-called “natural” flavourings need not be derived from the source on the label. Indeed, with something as expensive as vanilla, the chances are that your “natural vanillin” is not what we would think of as natural at all. and has never encountered an actual vanilla pod. So i’m pretty disappointed in Wikipedia there. Hope some future update of that page makes that point clear…
Note the title of this paper :
> A Biotechnological Process Involving Filamentous Fungi to Produce Natural Crystalline Vanillin from Maize Bran
. And yes, that product could legally call itself “natural”
I’m pretty sure we’ve discussed what that term “natural” flavor really means on this forum before? But damned if i can find that discussion, so I’ll just post this link
EDIT: sorry for multiple edits. I’m horribly butter-fingered with posting links , besides being severely afflicted with tab-overload ATM )