Research Sites?

[Astyas]

I've started seeing annatto being used in a lot of foods, so I looked it up. It turns out it's a spice that has a "peppery taste".  But, is it actually related to either pepper(the seasoning), peppers(the fruits), or celery? I don't exactly want to just blindly try it out...

Can anyone suggest any websites for this type of research? Preferably something a little more descript than "herbs, shrubs, trees". 

[CMdeux]

My recommendation is that you try looking it up with a search engine-- probably something like yippy or Bing that will 'cluster' result for easier sorting.

A quick search for annatto should lead you to a number of sources for it-- if not, try "source" as a search term with "annatto."

Then, determine what the scientific name of the plant is, using two (more is better) good (reliable) internet sources.  Wiki can be reliable... but it pays to look elsewhere to confirm, because wikis can also be notoriously UN-reliable, too.

Then, search again using the LATIN name for the plant in question, and look much more critically at info sources.  I tend to like to use botonay departments for this kind of thing, myself, or professional horticulture/botany sites, or government databases.

HTH.  Good luck!

[Astyas]

Thank you SO MUCH. I'm now 99.9% sure that it's NOT related to any problem foods! This may be the first time I'll be able to have something peppery in more than three years!!! Thank you, CMdeux!

[CMdeux]

I'm really glad that it helped!   

The reason why I didn't do this for Astyas (and made careful notes about how I would have) is that this is important stuff to know how to do, basically.  Thus me sharing my method rather than the results of it.

This is how I figured out that Acai is probably not something that I want to trust for my very TNA kiddo, but also probably not something that is worrisome from a cross-contamination standpoint, and it's also been a good way to begin to figure out why certain things might be cross-contaminated with an unrelated allergen (say, if they come from similar environments in only one part of the globe).