I checked the cinnamon in my cupboard. It came from a different tree.
Most ground cinnamon on UK shelves is cassia, a cousin of true Ceylon cinnamon that carries far more coumarin. I spent a week reading labels properly. This is what I found, and what I'd look for in a cinnamon supplement now.
It started with porridge. I put cinnamon on it most mornings, and one day I turned the jar round to see where it came from. The label said "Ground Cinnamon", then a best-before date and a barcode. No country, no species, nothing else.
That struck me as odd for something I eat every day, so I looked it up. There are two cinnamons in the shops, and they come from different trees. Ceylon cinnamon is Cinnamomum verum, grown mostly in Sri Lanka. Cassia is Cinnamomum cassia and its close relatives, grown mostly in China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Both get sold as "cinnamon", and the jar usually doesn't say which one you've bought.
Sticks make it easy to tell them apart. Cassia comes as one thick, hard curl of bark that you'd struggle to snap. Ceylon is a stack of thin, papery layers rolled up like a cigar, and it crumbles between your fingers. Once it's ground, the two look much the same, so price becomes the clue. Ceylon bark is peeled by hand and costs more to produce, which means a cheap own-brand jar is almost certainly cassia. Mine was a cheap own-brand jar.
Then I read about coumarin
Taste is the obvious difference. Cassia is hotter and more bitter, while Ceylon is softer and slightly sweet. The less obvious difference is coumarin, a natural compound that gives cassia part of its smell.
Cassia carries far more coumarin than Ceylon, which has only traces, and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) advises limiting how much coumarin we eat. The trouble is that nothing on a jar of cassia tells you how much a heaped spoonful contains, so you can't keep track of a limit you can't measure.
A sprinkle on porridge isn't what anyone is worried about. The sums change when cinnamon stops being a sprinkle and becomes a daily habit: a capsule, taken on purpose, for months.
If you're going to take something every day, it's worth knowing which tree it came from.
| Feature | Cassia | Ceylon |
|---|---|---|
| Species | Cinnamomum cassia and relatives | Cinnamomum verum |
| Mostly grown in | China, Indonesia, Vietnam | Sri Lanka |
| The stick | One thick, hard curl | Thin papery layers, rolled |
| Taste | Hot, bitter | Softer, slightly sweet |
| Coumarin | Far more | Traces |
| On the label | "Cinnamon" | Often also just "cinnamon" |
The supplement labels weren't much clearer
Cinnamon capsules are easy to find, and I assumed they'd say more than a spice jar does. Some did. Plenty didn't, and they fell short in three ways.
The first problem was the species. A lot of labels said "cinnamon bark powder" and stopped there, which told me as much as my jar had. If a capsule doesn't name Cinnamomum verum, there's a fair chance you're getting cassia, coumarin included.
The second was standardisation. Ground bark is just bark, and how much of the active compounds it holds changes with the tree, the harvest and how long it sat in a warehouse. A standardised extract is tested and adjusted to a set level of those compounds, so this month's capsule matches last month's. Without that, "500mg of cinnamon" tells you the weight of the powder and very little about what's in it.
The third was the blend. Some products list a "proprietary blend" with one total weight for five or six ingredients. It means you can't see how much of each one went in, so there's nothing to check.
All of it is legal, and most of it is probably habit. The label simply does less work than you'd hope, on something you might take every day for months.
What I'd want on the label instead
By the end of the week I had a short list. If I were going to take a cinnamon supplement, I'd want these four things:
- The species, named. Cinnamomum verum on the label means you know you're getting Ceylon, with its trace of coumarin, and you don't have to guess.
- A standardised extract. Set to cinnamaldehyde and polyphenols, cinnamon's active compounds, so a dose means the same thing every month.
- Every dose printed in milligrams. If the numbers are on the bag, you can check them against anything you read.
- A second active with its own track record, at a dose you can see. That's the one that led me to berberine.
Where berberine comes in
Berberine is a bright yellow compound found in plants such as barberry and goldenseal, and on a label you'll usually see it as berberine HCl. It works by a different route from cinnamon. Berberine is studied for activating AMPK, a pathway involved in glucose uptake distinct from insulin signalling. These are ingredient findings, not outcomes claimed for this product.
A caution, before we go any further. Berberine in particular is known to interact with some medications, including those for diabetes and certain statins. If you take any prescription medication, especially for blood sugar or cholesterol, speak to your GP or pharmacist before starting.
So the list was complete: Ceylon, standardised, printed doses, and berberine HCl at 500mg. I took it back to our own team, which is the point where I need to declare an interest.
Full disclosure: we make one
Matter makes a supplement called Ceylon Cinnamon, and it was built to that list. Two capsules with a meal give you 1,000mg of Cinnamomum verum extract, standardised to cinnamaldehyde and polyphenols, and 500mg of berberine HCl. Both doses are printed on the bag in milligrams, so you can hold us to them.
It's made to support healthy blood sugar already within the normal range and everyday metabolic wellness. That's the whole job. It's a food supplement, not a medicine, and it doesn't replace anything your GP has prescribed. If you're managing a diagnosed condition, have a word with your GP before adding anything new.