The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1886-09-24
FOOD FRAUDS.
HE SHAMEFUL USE OP LIME AND ALUM
j IN CHEAP BAKING POWDERS.

The SHAMEFUL USE OP LIME AND ALUM
IN CHEAP BAKING POWDERS.
Many food frauds, such as chieory
coffee or watered milk, although they
are swindle in commercial sense
are often tolerated because they do not
particularly affect the health of the con.
sumner but when an article like baking
powder, that enters largely into the food
of every family, and is relied upon for
the healthful preparation of almost
every meal, IS so made as to carry high
ly injurious, if not rankly poisonous, ele.
ments into the bread, to the Imminent
danger of the entire community, it is
the duty of the press to denounce the
practice in the most emphatic terms.
Among recent important discoveries
by she food analysis is that by Prof. Mott,
the U. S. Government Chemist, of large
amounts of lime and alum in the cheap
baking powders. These are, one the
most dangerous, and the other the most
useless adulterants yet found in the low
grade, inferior baking powders. 1t is a
startling fact that of. over one. hundred
different 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. tits true that lime, when
subjected to heat, gives off certain
amount of carbonic acid gas, but ia quick
lime is left-a caustic SO powerful that it
is used by tanners to eat the hair from
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 painful effects how much
more serious must these effects be on
the delicate membranes of the stomach.
intestines and kidneys, more particular
ly infants and children, and especially
when the lime is taken into the system
day after day, and with almost every
meal. This is said by physicians to be
one of the chief causes of Indigestion,
dyspepsia, and those painful diseases of
the kindeys nowso prevalent. Instances
of the most serious affections Of the latter
organs from drinking lime water found in
some sections of the West are noted in
every medical journal.
Adulteration with lime is quite as
much to be dreaded as with alum, which
has heretofore received the most en-
phatic condemnation from every food
analyst, physician and chemist, for the
reason that, while alum is probably
partially 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 the chemists have
found twelve. per cent or one-eighth of |
The entire weight of some samples of
baking powder analysed to be lime, the
of the adulteration will be
July apparent.
Pure baking powders are one of the
chief aids to the cook in preparing per-
'ect and wholesome food. While those
ire to be obtained of well-established
like the Royal, of whose
purity there has never been and cannot
BE a question, it is proper to avoid all
others.