The root beer you drink is FAKE. The traditional American beverage sold in groceries today are made without an important, God-given flavor— sassafras root bark.
Sassafras (Sassafras albidum ) has been used in America for centuries (it originally grew in Eastern U.S.). The Cherokee, Chippewa, Creek, Delaware, Iroquois, Seminole, and other Native American tribes extracted the oil from the sassafras root bark (called safrole oil) for medical purposes. Ailments targeted ranged from diarrhea to fevers to nose bleeds to infections to heart troubles to wounds. It also had culinary uses for Native Americans.
Sassafras may have been responsible for America's discovery. Legend has it that the fragrance of sassafras trees (smells exactly like root beer) enabled Christopher Columbus to convince his mutinous crew that land was near.
Like the natives, Europeans came to prize it as a cure for their ailments, one of which was the French Pox (syphilis). In 1602, a special expedition came from England to Massachusetts in search of it. It was a big export for the American colonies.
Below is an excerpt from the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1716).
The sassafras root came to be used in root beer in colonial America. Families brewed all kinds of beers from whatever they can find and root beer was one of them (others were birch, sarsaparilla, ginger, wintergreen, etc.) There's no formal date and place when root beers were created. In fact, there's no actual single recipe for root beer. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson drank root beer made according to their favorite recipes
Below is one recipe.
As you can see, it was made directly from the natural world. Clean water was hard to come by so settlers had to brew drinks from whatever they could find. The alcohol and carbon dioxide from brewing had antimicrobial properties and protected people from toxic bacteria.
In the 1800s, the industrial production of root beer extract commenced. This was sold in small containers in grocery stores and candy stores with instructions for making 5 to 10 gallons of root beer at home. By the mid-twentieth century, thousands of root beer brands eventually proliferated.
In December 1960, the FDA banned sassafras and the oil that comes from it. An FDA-appointed seven-man committee discovered that "a statistically significant number of malignant liver tumors" was found in laboratory rats fed strong doses of safrole.
The FDA used the newly enacted Delaney clause, which bans all foods, drugs or cosmetics found to produce in man OR animals. Cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices that contain safrole were banned because they had lower concentrations of the compound.
At the time, root beer industry critics pointed out the flaws of the study, one of which was the absurd dosage the laboratory rats were given. The rats were given 5,000 parts per million of safrole. Root beer beverages contained 6 to 30 parts per million.
Over 50 tons of root beer and root beer concentrate were destroyed. 88 firms destroyed them in front of FDA inspectors. Manufacturers pivoted to artificial flavoring replacements or substitutes like wintergreen oil or birch bark in their root beer.
Decades later, the study used to ban sassafras continues to be criticized. Just like the industry, toxicologists pointed the dosage used. To sum up their view, they cited a quote by Paracelsus: "Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy."
A 200-pound man would have to drink 24 gallons of root beer a day to reach the levels of toxicity the lab rats endured, one journalist noted. Critics also pointed out that rats have different digestive processes than humans. Studies that actually examined safrole consumption in humans at smaller does and found it was eliminated within a day.
In fact, studies in the last decade are finding that there are medical benefits to sassafras to your health. Safrole, the oil of sassafras, may be effective against liver cancer, Leukemia, lung cancer and other kinds of cancer; kill parasites; manage diabetes; and improve blood circulation.
Luckily, while commercially sold root beer can't have sassafras, you can obtain it as a raw material from your local herbal store or Amazon or pick it from the tree yourself (it's in the East U.S. and many states in the heartland).
This week I brewed myself a batch of root beer with the sassafras root bark— it’s delicious.