Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Sunny Day Organics, Not Actually Organic, But Totally 100% Natural, Raw Vanilla Bean Powder! The packaging goes out of its way to be very clear that this is a 100% natural product, and never labels it as organic. The company brand name is "organic," but not this product. The closest they come is the statement, "The beans are grown naturally without pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic chemicals." Which is technically organic, except that without the organically grown certification those are claims that don't have to be substantiated. They could claim it's grown in solid gold flower pots and hand pollinated by blind monks for all it matters without the certification. I love deceptive brand marketing. As for the actual powder, it is well and truly a dry powder. If you've ever used whole vanilla bean pods to cook with you know how sticky they are, how much the oils of the bean pod get all over your hands, and how much the vanilla seeds stick together. This is nothing like a whole vanilla bean pod ground up. This is more like they took the used up pods from extraction process and ground them up, which would make sense as the alcohol from those processes would desiccate the pods and the resulting powder would be much more dry than a virgin vanilla seed pod. "There are no post-extraction vanilla beans used" I call a second shenanigans for that. Either that, or these are some seriously baked out beans. They don't smell like anything, and certainly not like vanilla. So I used them to make a cup of hot coco. Couldn't even tell I'd added vanilla to it. Usually, brands I've purchased in the past, I find using 1/4 the amount of a ground vanilla = the same flavor of extract vanilla. With this stuff, I doubled it, and still didn't get any vanilla flavor. One star quality. Save your money to spend on a brand that's actually going to sell you ground whole vanilla beans. I don't know what brand that is... so if you find one, let me know. I used to buy "The Raw Food World Organic Raw Sun Cured Whole Vanilla Bean Powder," but it's no long available and I have yet to find a replacement.