As I sit down to write this, I’m indulging in a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream. It’s undoubtedly the best ice cream you can buy (well certainly in my local Danish supermarket). It’s a rich mix of vanilla ice cream blended with lumps of raw cookie dough and chocolate chips. What could be better? 

The reason I’m sharing the details of my unhealthy lifestyle is that today’s destination is Madagascar. One of the only things I know about Madagascar is that vanilla always seems to originate from Madagascar.

Supermarket isles the world over are lined with rows of luxury products proclaiming that they’re exclusive, and worth more than their competitors because they contain “Madagascan Vanilla”. It turns out that this is actually a little bit deceptive. 80% of the world’s vanilla is grown in Madagascar. So, dear food marketers, if you want a truly exclusive product, you should probably source your vanilla from somewhere other than Madagascar.

Even if Madagascan vanilla is ubiquitous it’s certainly high quality, and delicious. Demand for Madagascan vanilla has resulted in prices skyrocketing and has is also causing somewhat of a gold rush in Madagascar. High vanilla prices have infused large sums of money into small villages where vanilla is grown in the Madagascan hills. 

Despite this recent influx of vanilla money, Madagascar is still one of the poorest countries in the world. The infrastructure is very underdeveloped and the GDP per capita was only $471 in 2019. Let’s hope the default ice cream flavour continues to be vanilla and Madagascar has a wealthier future.

This is undoubtedly the most I’ve ever thought about, or written about vanilla before. Anyway, to partially offset this vanilla-based detour, here are a few bonus Madagascan facts to round off today’s post.

Lemurs are native to Madagascar and only found in the wild in Madagascar. There are a hundred species of lemur to be precise. In fact, Madagascar is known for its biodiversity. Despite being roughly the size of France, Madagascar is home to over 200,000 known species.

Unlike Madagascan vanilla, the people that come from Madagascar are not called Madagascan, but Malagasy. Many Malagasy people can partially trace their routes back to Austronesian ancestry.

Apparently there’s a children’s movie about Madagascar starring Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Sacha Baron Cohen and David Schwimmer. I haven’t seen it. Should I?