The Bozeman weekly chronicle. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1883-1889, 1885-12-30
FOOD FRAUDS.
The Shameful Use or Lime and Alum
in Cheap Baking Powders.

L
Many food frauds, such as chicory cof.
fee or watered milk, although they are a
swindle in commercial sense, are often
tolerated because they do not particular
ly affect the health of the consumer; but
when an article like baking powder, that
enters largely into the food of every
family, and is relied upon for the health
| full preparation of almost every meal, is
so made as to carry highly injurious if
not rankly poisonous elements into the
bread to the eminent danger of the en-
tire community, it is the duty Of the
press to emphatically denounee the
manufacturers whose avarice has
prompted them to such diabolieal opera
tionS.
Among the recent important discover
les by the food analysts is that by Prof.
Mott, the U. S. Government Chemist, of
large amounts of lime in the cheap bak-
ing powders, This IS, if not the most
dangerous, certainly the most useless
adulterant yet found in the low grade,
inferior baking powders. 1t is start
ling fact that of over one hundred differ
ent brands of baking powder so far
analysed, comprising all those sold in
this vicinity, not one Of them, with the
single exception of the Royal Baking
Powder, was found free from both lime
and alum. The chief service of lime is
to add weight. 1t is rue that lime when
subjected to heat gives off certain
amount of carbonic acid gas, but quick
lime is left, caustic so powerful that it
is used by tanners to eat the hainfrom
hides of animals, and in dissecting rooms
to more quickly rot the flesh from the
bones of dead subjects. A small quanti-
ty of dry lime upon the tongue, or in
the eye, produces painless effects; how
much more serious must these effects be
upon the delicate membranes of the
stomach. intestines and kidneys, more
particularly ofinfants and children, and
especially when the lime is taken into
the system day after day and with al
most every meal. This is said by physi-
clans to be one of the chief causes of in
digestion, dyspepsia and those painful
diseases of the kidneys now SO preva-
lent. Instances of the most serious af
fectlons of the latter organs from drink
ing lime waters found in some sections
of the west are noted in every medical
journal.
Adulteration with lime is even more
to be dreaded than with alum, which
has heretofore received the most empha-
tic condemnation from every food an
alvst, physician, and chemist, for the
reason that while alum is probably par
italy dissolved and passed off IN gas by
the heat of baking, it is impossible to
destroy or change the nature of the
lime in any degree, so that the entire
amount in the baking powder passes,
with all Its injurious properties, into the
stomach. When we state that the
chemists have found twelve per cent or
of the entire weight of some
of baking powder analysed to be
lime, the wickedness of the adulteration
will be fully apparent.
Pure baking powders are one of the
chief aids to the cook in preparing per-
feet and wholesome food. While those
are to be obtained of we'll established
reputation lik e the Royal of whose pur-
ity there has never been and cannot be
q question. it is proper to avoid all
others.