TikTok users discovering new facts and reacting to them is usually a pretty entertaining genre of video.
The most recent iteration of it - people googling where vanilla flavoring comes from - has TikTok users cracking up at one another pretty hard.
The game started with user @Sloowmoee posing the challenge after he Googled it himself.
For those of you who are unaware and not looking to go Google it yourself - the "OMGNOOOO" source of some vanilla flavoring is beaver butts, basically.
Castoreum is a waxy secretion beavers release from glands near the bases of their tails.
Beavers aren't particularly keen to give up castoreum, but you can milk their anal glands to force them to express the substance. It can then be used in fragrance and flavoring.
It used to be much more popular than it currently is, most vanilla now is vanilla bean or a synthetic alternative. Both of those are much easier to obtain than the labor-intensive castoreum, but castoreum does have the advantage of being a "natural" flavoring and so it doesn't need to be specifically mentioned on the label.
As such, it still gets plenty of use in items that pride themselves on a more natural content as well as in the fragrance industry where perfumes seek out the "warmth" it can provide to scent profiles.
Beaver Butt Juice sent TikTok absolutely over the edge.
@sloowmoee/TikTok
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Now that TikTok has been thoroughly horrified by the whole beaver butt juice thing, do you think someone should start finding out where natural dyes and colorings come from?
Sounds fun!
