The Holistic Parrot by Leslie Moran
In working with parrots and their caregivers over the years, many people have told me about the different ways they season the foods they are feeding. One condiment that often comes up is cinnamon. Many consider this popular flavour a good all around go-to when enticing a parrot to eat a new food. This month we explore the benefits and known concerns about feeding your parrots cinnamon.
Being known in China as early as 2700 BC, cinnamon was even mentioned in the old testament as well as in ancient Sanskrit texts as old as 1500 BCE. Today, the leading consumer of cinnamon is Great Britain followed by the United States and Spain.
Over the millennia, indigenous people harvesting cinnamon have not always been treated fairly. One example of this is a group of Hindu People, known as the Salagma, who lived on a primarily Buddhist island of Sri Lanka. Harvesting cinnamon by hand was a treasured tradition to them. When first discovered the spice trade devastated the island and these people. However, with the advent of global ‘fair trade’ organisations generations later, these people now are able to sell their prized cinnamon crops for a price well above the going market rate.