[Mets]

Hi everyone,

After noticing that a large number of "vanilla" flavored foods don't actually have vanilla in them, but instead this substance called "vanillin," I did a little research and found that both vanilla and vanillin are alcohols.  I know that vanilla has to have 35% ethyl alcohol to meet FDA standards, but is the alcohol that is vanillin the same kind of alcohol that you find in an alcoholic beverage?  Would drinking an alcoholic beverage essentially be similar then, just vanillin, obviously, is in drastically less proportions?  I guess what I'm asking is do all alcohols have the same affect on humans, and if not, is vanillin a "bad alcohol."  Thanks, and sorry if this is a stupid question.

Mets

[Mitch]

The only intoxicating alcohol is ethanol. Just because a compound has an alcohol group doesn't mean your drinking an alcoholic breverage. Beans, beef, water all have alcohol groups in its constituents but your not going to get drunk from consuming them.

[Mets]

Ah, that makes sense, thanks Mitch.

So does vanillin contain ethanol?  I'm guessing no from your answer.  We're actually doing a "fake chemistry" research paper here at school for my chemE class, and I think I'm going to use this topic.  I guess pure vanilla costs about $3.50/oz while the synthetic "vanillin" is about $0.20/oz, which has lead to some attempts at "fake" labeling of vanillin as natural vanilla for profit.  I found one study which was using isotopic ratio mass spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance to differentiate between petroleum-based vanilla (fake) and natural vanilla, but that seems a little over the top for somebody just trying to get an ice cream cone.

If anyone is interested:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:toesu5iUor0J:www.chemistry.org/portal/resources/ACS/ACSContent/education/curriculum/chemmatters/archive/2003_12_smpissue.pdf+does+vanillin+have+ethanol%3F&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a

and, the case study which I stumbled upon:
Adolescent Ethanol Intoxication from Vanilla Extract Ingestion:
http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijfp/vol4n1/vanilla.xml

[wereworm73]

Vanillin itself is just 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde.  It's found in both natural vanilla beans & artificial vanillla extracts.  The natural vanilla extract, though, will have other organic substances not found in the artificial one.