dissolving cinnamon?

[ozbuc]

I was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and through a little research I have been reading about some positive effects that cinnamon has on type 2 diabetes. I have been adding cinnamon to my diet as much as makes flavor sense to me but I have a question about Iced tea and coffee. When I add cinnamon to my tea and coffee it just goes to the bottom and sits there in a glop no matter how much I stir or shake. Is there a way to dissolve cinnamon without adding fats or other items that would be inadvisable for a diabetic?
Note to board monitor, please feel free to move this post to a more relevant area.

[HillJ]

I find it much easier to sprinkle than dissolve. I sprinkle cinnamon on my yogurt, eggs, toast, ADDED to my coffee beans then grind, on hot or cold cereal and I make a cinnamon slurry using freshly ground cinnamon and milk (2% or coconut milk) which I keep refrigerated and use for a variety of recipes.

[greygarious]

Cinnamon will dissolve in alcohol and alcohol-containing extracts like vanilla. Make that tea into Long Island Iced Tea! ;-) Seriously, experiment mixing cinnamon into a paste by using a little vodka, for example. Then see if the paste will mix into the hot beverage.

But you need at least a tsp of cinnamon a day to make a blood sugar difference. It's hard to consume that much. I've had success controlling blood sugar by using cinnamon capsules (cheapest source seems to be Puritan's Pride, which sells online. Also, look into Gymnema, an herb known as "destroyer of sugar". I get that from www.vitacost.com.

[eight_inch_pestle]

I regularly add a few dashes (and some cardamon seeds, but that's another story) to my french press coffee grounds before adding the hot water.

[Skyfrog]

Go to www.peoplespharmacy.com/2009/08/09/is.... It tells you about cinnulin, an ingredient in cinnamon. I found it by typing "dissolving cinnamon?" in my Inbox search box. It came up with LOTS of sites and information about cinnamon ingredients and dissolving it.

[scubadoo97]

It is common to find cinnamon capsules in the vitamin section of your local pharmacy or market. They are just gel capsules that are filled with cinnamon. Easy way to get it down.

[Kagey]

This may sound weird, but I actually eat cinnamon sticks. I don't know if there's anything wrong with doing this (I've been doing it for 30 years or so and I'm ok), but they're actually surprisingly sweet if you chew them! So I guess that's another option.

[todao]

You can't "dissolve" cinnamon; it's a bark. It's the volatile oils in cinnamon that provide the flavor. I try to avoid cinnamon with a volatile oil content below 2%.
When I was still in grade school and middle school (we call it Jr. High back then) I carried a box of cinnamon sticks in my jacket and chewed on them throughout the day. Using cinnamon sticks in drinks is, IMO, the best way to get the flavor infused into the liquid. Powders and ground cinnamon work fairly well when used in a infuser (like a tea infuser) or in the form of a bouquet garni.

[ozbuc]

Thanks for the tips, Cmkdvs is correct the active ingredient methylhydroxy chalcone polymer is indeed water soluble and the stuff that sits on the bottom is just fiber.

[paulj]

Curiously, a traditional Ecuadorian drink is 'canelazo', a cinnamon flavored hot tody. Cinnamon sticks are steeped with raw sugar, and then spiked with local rum. Have they been drinking a health beverage for years?

http://www.latina.com/latina/food/rec...

paulj

[paulj]

Cinnamon is a bark, so the powder that you are using is just finely ground bark. The other way of using it is to steep the whole bark in boiling water. You'd have to check your sources to see whether the flavor extracted that way is as beneficial as ingesting the dust itself. I'd also check on whether they favor one type of cinnamon over another. There are at least 3 types of cinnamon bark on the market - the thick quills sold in fancy spice bottles, the thin bark sold in Mexican shops, and thick coarse chunks favored by Vietnamese.

paulj

[Val]

Or, you could add some ground cinnamon to your coffee basket before brewing it.

[cmkdvs]

I used to do that, but found the cinnamon swells up and majorly slows down the operation (at least on a carafe-type coffee maker). I have seen, but not tried, cinnamon granules (appear to be a coarser grind of the bark, more like ground coffee). If I were still doing it that way, it's what I'd try.

The OP should check to verify, but when I was looking into this I did understand that the beneficial factors were water-extractable.

[cheesecake17]

Works wonderfully in a stovetop percolater.
When I used a drip coffee maker,I mixed the cinnamon into the grinds, rather than just add some on top.

[jsaimd]

Cinnamon will not dissolve in water, but you can infuse the flavor and I would assume some of the health benefits, by putting a cinnamon stick in the water as it heats.