Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1886-09-03
FOOD FRAUDS.
The Shameful Use of Lime and Alum in Cheap
Baking Powders.

BAKING POWDERS
Many food frauds, such as chicory
coffee or watered milk, although they
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 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, it is the duty of
the press to denounce the practice in
the most emphatic terms.
Among recent important discov-
cries by the food analysts is that
by Prof. Mott, the u. S. Government
Chemist, of large amounts of lime
and alum in the cheap baking pow
ders. These are, one the most dan
gerous and the other the most useless,
adulterants yet found in the low-grade,
inferior baking powders. 1t is a start
ling 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 SER
vice 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 subjects. A
small quantity of dry lime upon the
tongue, or in the eye, produces pain
full effects but how much more seri-
Gus must these effects be upon the
delicate membranes of the stomach,
intestines and kidneys, more particu-
larly of infants and children, and es-
pecially when the lime is taken into
the system day after day, and with al
most every meal. This is said by
physicians to be one of the chief
causes of indigestion, dyspepsia and
those painful diseases of the kidneys
now so prevalent. Instances of the
most serious affections of the latter
organs from drinking 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 prob
ably partially dissolved and passed off
in gas by the heat of baking it is inn
possible 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 wick
edness 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 well-estab-
lished reputation, like the Royal, OF
whose purity there has never been and
cannot be question, it is proper to
avoid all others.