How to tell real cinnamon

 The reason I resurrected this was seeing a ground cinnamon from 5th  Season products, with the ingredient listed as canela molida, a new  variation for me.
Today’s rant started about food pictures, but ended up about cassia bark.
I get very irritated with graphics floating around the social media  sites claiming the healing power of various herbs and spices, when the  photo is incorrect.
Recently I have seen paprika labeled ground cayenne pepper, regular oregano as Greek oregano and  as always, cassia bark as cinnamon. Once a particular picture gets  fixed in the minds of people, the lie gets repeated so often that the  truth gets lost.
  When I lived in Mexico, cinnamon was considered a  cure-all and I do mean all. It was taken for everything from a head  cold to a broken leg, and the local markets in San Miguel de Allende had  stacks of wonderful quills for a very reasonable price, but they did  not have the best aromatic quality. Despite that, they were genuine, and  everyone knew the difference between them and what is ubiquitously sold  in the USA as cinnamon, its sometimes very toxic relative, cassia bark.  In fact, 21 of the first 25 pictures of “cinnamon” if you google image  search, are various kinds of cassia bark. It is so prevalent that even  people selling the real stuff (Ceylon cinnamon) often end up with their  product labeling including a photo of cassia.
Cinnamon toxic? Yes.  At least what is usually called cinnamon in ingredient lists, and most  spice bottles, as cassia contains coumarin, which is banned as a  flavorant food additive due to concerns about its hepatoxicity in animal  models.
 In humans it is only considered moderately toxic to the  liver and kidneys but it has a daily intake limit of 0.1 mg/kg of body  weight and 1 teaspoon of cassia bark cinnamon powder contains 5.8 to  12.1 mg, which is above the level of acceptability for many smaller  people and your children.
If you think that is OK, then you have to  be aware of how many products in the grocery store actually contain not  only cassia bark, but vanilla substitutes, as coumarin is used a  flavoring agent in them, despite having been banned as a food additive  in numerous countries since the mid-20th century.
So once again, in  the interests of profit, (cassia bark is very cheap compared to Sri  Lankan or Ceylon cinnamon,), something that should be good for us has  been changed for something that is proven to be toxic, but allowed into  the food supply by pressure from industry lobbying.
The photo shows  the obvious difference between the thick, dark orange of cassia bark and  the light, crumbly, multilayered cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon with the  scientific names of cinnanomum velum or cinnanomum zeylanicum.