Vanilla fragrans, as genuine vanilla is known, is native to Mexico, and well into the 19th century makers of high-quality Mexican vanilla had a lock on the business. But competitors elsewhere in the world began stealing market share, and in the 1880s the first synthetic vanilla was developed in Germany. During the Mexican Revolution of 1910-'20 fighting devastated the gulf coast, the center of Mexican vanilla cultivatiion, and productiion dropped sharply. Faced with a flood of cheap erstaz product and little of the genuine artical to sell, Mexican producers began making synthetic vanilla themselves. But Mexico was still known as the home of the world's best vanilla, so the producers didn't admit what they where doing. They diguised the atificial taste by adding coumarin, an extract of the tonka bean, Dipteryx odorata. COUMARIN TASTE AND SMELLS JUST LIKE VANILLA, only more so. One whiff and your rube tourist from Utah is likely to say, "Whoa that's good!" No, that's bad. Coumarin has been shown to cause liver damage in lab animals. The Food and Drug Administration restricted in starting in 1940 and banned it outright from all foods and food additives sold in the U.S. in 1954 Many other countries have done likewise.

Coumarin has its uses. A derivative called dicumarol is used as an anti coagulant (blood thinner). Under the trade name warfarin it's used to poison RATS by causing internal bleeding. FDA Consumer artical about the dangers of herbal tea told of a young woman who drank large amounts of a home-brew tea containing coumarin and suffered abnormal menstrual bleeding. So yes, I'd say TOXIC.