---

What is the Cinnamon Challenge?

The Cinnamon Challenge is pretty simple. All you need is a tablespoon of ground cinnamon, a webcam and a total disregard for self-preservation. If you can eat the cinnamon without aid – no water, no applesauce – you win.

But nobody wins.

You can watch thousands of people on YouTube attempting to jump on this Spice Trade bandwagon – scroll on down if you can’t wait – but almost all of them end the same way: choking, gagging, vomiting and, in the good ones, spewing clouds of cinnamon smoke like you’re some kind of gingersnap dragon.

Still, all the cool internet kids are doing it. The meme has grown so strong, schools have outlawed the stuff. In fact, one middle school even banned open top boots because kids were using Uggs to smuggle cinnamon.

Why is cinnamon so hard to swallow?

If you’re trying to impress your friends and looking for secrets to swallowing cinnamon, the science is against you.

The spice that magically transforms dough and sugar into a sticky bun is actually ground up tree bark, which means we’re talking about a lot of water-resistant cellulose. And according to retired physical chemist Vince Calder, the rest is “a mixture of volatile organic compounds, a major component being [cinnamaldehyde]*, which is not very water soluble.”

If you want to see this in action without risking asphyxiation, put a tablespoon of cinnamon in a bowl and jostle it until the powder is level. Using a straw, allow a drop of water to fall on the surface. Instead of saturating the cinnamon – like it would with sugar – the water just beads up and rolls around like the liquid seed of a rusty T1000.

Is the Cinnamon Challenge Dangerous?

In a word, yes. Coating your tongue, gums and throat with moisture-slaying dust is a little like greeting a sandstorm with an open mouth. Without lubrication (saliva), you can’t perform deglutition (swallowing). And if you can’t swallow right away, eventually, you’ll have to breathe.

This is where the Cinnamon Challenge gets dangerous. Panic transmogrifies your breaths into gasps. And if you thought cinnamon was rough on the palate, imagine what it’ll do to your pretty pink lungs.

The body doesn’t take kindly to massive amounts of foreign material gumming up its alveoli – the tiny sacs in mammal lungs that exchange Carbon Dioxide for Oxygen. Once inside, the body treats cinnamon like an invading army and fights it with inflammation. This can cause pneumonia. Long-term, it can mean heavy scarring or reduced lung capacity.

Of course, all this is presuming you don’t simply choke to death while your friends laugh in your face.

Still feeling spicy?

In 2011, the American Association of Poison Control Center’s National Poison Data System recorded 51 calls regarding teens and cinnamon. As of the end of March 2012, the AAPCC is already up to 139. Which means kids are still doing it, despite more than enough evidence to suggest cinnamon swallowing is one of the more idiotic fads you can get into – not the least of which are literally hundreds of thousands of videos that show it to be nearly impossible.

So let’s add another reason to stay away. Liver damage. Cinnamon contains a chemical compound called coumarin that, when ingested in large quantities, can cause liver damage in particularly sensitive individuals. Sie Germans even considered regulating coumarin levels in Christmas cookies. (Worse off are rats and mice – they metabolize coumarin differently than us, producing cancer.)

But this is unlikely. So long as you keep the stuff out of your lungs (and your face off YouTube) and you’ll likely be fine.

Bittel Me More: Cinnamon Leftovers

1. You probably didn’t know that there are actually two basic varieties of cinnamon. First, there’s Cinnamomum aromaticum, AKA cassia or Chinese cinnamon – the one Americans are most likely to have on their spice rack. Second, we have Cinnamomum verum, AKA “true cinnamon”, Ceylon cinnamon or Sri Lanka cinnamon – Bonus fact: Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon until 1972.
2. Due to cinnamaldehyde, referenced by Calder earlier, cinnamon oil can be used as an environmentally-friendly (and lovely smelling) pesticide. In fact, it’s more effective than DEET at killing mosquito larvae.
3. On the other side of the churro, cinnamon may help boost metabolism and reduce postprandial insulin and triglyceride levels.
4. Finally, cinnamon oil has high antimicrobial activity, so researchers in Spain have added it to bread packaging, resulting in 10 extra days of no-mold sandwiches.

Question courtesy of Abby M., whom I’ll leave slightly anonymous so she won’t be associated with this ridiculous meme, should it ever have the grace to die.

Sweet nestled skull image courtesy of goodtastephotography.com

*Original version of this article quoted a source that misspelled “cinnamaldehyde.” Those extra a’s and n’s have been taken out back and shot.