Bridgeton pioneer. (Bridgeton, N.J.) 1884-1919, 1886-08-19
FOOD FRAUDS.
THE SHAMEFUL USE OF LIME AND ALUM
IN CHEAP BAKING POWDERS.

IN CHEAP BAKING POWDERS.
Many food frauds, such as chicory
coffee or watered milk, although they
are swindle in a commercial sense,
are often tolerated because they do
not particularly 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 healthful prepara-
ton of almost every meal, is SO made
as to carry highly injurious, if not
rankly poisonous, elements 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 the food analysts is that of 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 analyzed, COM
prising all those sold in this vicinity.
not one of them, with the single ex-
ception of the Royal Baking Powder
was found free from both lime and
alum. The chief service of lime is to
add weight. 1t is true that lime, when
subjected to heat, gives off a certain
amount of carbonic acid gas, but a
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 sub
jects. A small quantity of dry lime
upon the tongue, or in the eye, pro-
duces painful effects; how much more
serious must these effects be upon the
delicate membranes of the stomach,
intestines and kidneys, more partic-
ularly of infants and children, and
especially when the lime is taken into
the system day by day, and with al
most every meal. This is said by
physicians to be one of the chief causes
of Indigestion, dyspepsia, and those
diseases of the kidneys now so pre-
valent. Instances of the most serious
affections of latter organs from drink
ing lime waters 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 emphatic 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 that the chemists have
found twelve per cent, or eighth
of the entire weight of some samples
of baking powder analyzed, 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
perfect and wholesome food. While
those are to be obtained of we'll estab
lished reputation, like the Royal, OF
whose purity there has never beer
and cannot be a question, it is proper
to avoid all Others