Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1883-11-23
Food AduIteration.

The Register wants to present some.
thing that will be interesting breakfast
talk. It is bill of fare, and right from
Paris, that earthly heaven, from which
French cooks do occasionally wander
forth TO bless American households.
writer In recent French magazine
has drawn 1t up and analysed 1t. We
give the least startling of the analysis.
Chocolate Is manufactured from rice,
flour, peas and beans, olive or almond
oil, roasted nuts, sawdust, cinnibar, red
oxide of mercury, minium, chalk and
other mineral substances. Tapioca Is
made out of potatoes heated in copper
and slightly tinctured with acetate of
copper, which same metal gives the
beautiful green to pickles. Fish are
kept in state Of preservation to be
brought inland by embalming' them
with mixture of chloride of lime and
acetate of aluminium. Butter used in
cooking up these delicious dishes is
mixed with veal fat, stet, lard, weighted
with clay, chalk, gypsum, silicate OF
potassium, sulphate of baryum, and
colored with chromate of lead, or n
"tinctorial paste" of various poisons.
Currant Jelly is made of n marrow ex-
tracted from n Japanese sea weed; a
little beet juice or carmine is added for
color, glucose for sweetening, and
spoonful of syrup for odor, and no one
can tell 1t from that made from cur
rants.
While coffee used to be made of good
potatoes, wheat, oats, or carrots, the
English now prepare real Government
Java from caramel, tan-bark, mahog-
any, sawdust and baked horse's liver.
Of course these examples do not half
exhaust the list of Illegally manufact-
ured food and drink. Many are already
known, and we give these as the latest,
and two or three of the mixtures the
doctor advises the melancholy dyspep-
tic to take to cure the Indigestion
caused. First, there is pepsin. Pepsin
is the digestive principal extracted from
the stomachs of various animals. The
indefatigable chemist now adds to a
small basis of the real substance, gela-
tine. glucose, glycerine and salicylic
acid, which prevents fermentation.
And quinine, so dear in this climate of
malaria and neuralgia, quinine contains
boracic acid, chalk, magnesia, phos-
phate and sulphate of soda and nitrate
of potassium, benzoic and stearic acid,
glucose, sugar of lead and other poi
sons, too numerous to mention.
The adulteration of sugar, molasses,
tea, spice and other things which have
been so treated for years, we need not
speak of. Everybody knows "they put
something in," but fortunately, or un-
fortunately rather, they do not know
what.
There is scarcely thing sold which
is not initiated to the detriment of the
consumer or purchaser. This matter
of adulteration is one of the most inn
portant questions of the day. If in
Europe, where eminent chemists are en-
listed by Government Systematically to
analyze all goods sold, and if in coun-
tries where there is an imperial health
Office, where every important town has
municipal laboratory and technical
commission composed of educated
chemists and physicians, yet the mar
ket is flooded with deleterious foods and
medicines, what must be the state OF
things in a country like the United
States where the poor and uneducated
are unprotected? Massachusetts,, thanks
to the endeavors of Mr.. George T.
Augell, assisted by Mr.. Charles r.
Fletcher and other public spirited
chemists, made innumerable analysis
and actually scared the public into pro-
tecting themselves. In very short
time n great improvement was mani
fest. Sugar became free from glucose,
butter from lard, and flour from terra
alba. But in the West things are worse
than ever. A careful chemist recently
made analysis of food found in Detroit,
Chicago and st. Louis, and the result
was so startling and horrifying we
should not care to lay it before our
readers at the breakfast table.
1t is certainly time something was
done. 1t is certainly broad and fer
tile theme for some enthusiastic re-
former. 1t affects the health and hap
piness of the State, and concerns the
boys and girls of the present genera
ton in the same proportion to their ed
ucation. If we would continue to be a
strong and vigorous people the Govern
ment will have to take decided meas
ures very soon to secure us unadultcr-
ated food, or we may as well eat, drink
and be merry, "for tomorrow we die. ;"
1t is fashionable in these days to talk
much about the wretched literature
young people are allowed to read. 1t
is called weak and silly and dissipating,
and this is right and wise. But mental
vigor depends largely ON bodily health,
and wholesome diet is as essential as
wholesome reading.-IOWa State Regis
ter.