Morris tribune., 1886-10-06
FOOD FRAUDS.
The shamsful use of lime and alum in
cheap baking powders.

ne xHdHiSiuI use W HiHc anu ALUM w
cheap baking powders.
Many food frauds, such as chicory
coffee or watered milk, although they
are a 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.ente largely
into the food of every family, and is
relied upon for the healthful prepare
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, 1t is the duty of
the press to denounce the practice in
the most emphatic terms.
Among recent important dis
coveries by the 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 ad-
ultrants yet found in the low grade,
inferior baking powders. It is
startling fact that of over one hundred
different brands of baking powders so
far analysed, comprizing all those
sold in the vicinity, not one of them,
with the single exception ofthe Royal
Baking Powder, was found free from
both lime and alum. The chief
service of lime is to add weight. It is
true that lime, when subjected to heat
gives Off q certain amount of carbonic
acid gas, but q 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
quantity 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 particularly of infants and
children, and especially when the
lime is taken into the system day af-
ter day, and with almost every meal.
This Is said by physicians to be one of
the chief causes of indigestion, dys-
pepsia, and those painful diseases of
the kidneys now SO prevalent. In
stances 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 he dreaded as with alum,
which has heretofore received the
most emphatic condemnation from
every feod analyst, physician and
chemist, for the reason that, while
alum il probably partially dissolved
and passed off in gas by the heat of
baking, 1t Ia 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 one
eighth of the entire weight of some
samples of baking powder analysed,
to be lime, the wickedness of the ad-
liberation 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 well-eB-
tablished reputation, like the Royal,
of whose purity there has never been
and cannot be question, it is proper
to AVOID all others.