A dubious and insidious view of what goes into our food, without us really knowing.

https://livingnongmo.org/2021/11/02/is-synbio-vanilla-natural-heck-no/

 

Oh and as an aside, there's this gem that suggests 'white' would not exist were it not for 'black' -

How a slave created an industry

For centuries, horticulturists and naturalists tried to coax vanilla vines into productivity. The breakthrough finally came when a slave in the French colony of Bourbon developed the hand pollination technique still used today. Le geste d’Edmond, or “Edmond’s gesture,” was fundamental to the lucrative natural vanilla market, but Edmond himself never benefited from it. Because he was a young Black slave, his innovation was doubted, derided and ultimately appropriated. 

The modern vanilla market is centered in the region where Edmond lived, where a subtle flavor once harvested by Indigenous peoples, taken by colonizers and finally brought into production by a slave still flourishes.