The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-03-31
FOOD FRAUDS.
The Sham efuI Use of Lime and Alum in
Cheap Baking Powders.

Many food frauds, such as chicory coffee
or watered milk, although they are swim
die in a commercial sense, are often toler-
ated 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 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 entire community, it is the
duty of the press to emphatically denounce
the manufacturers whose avarice has promp-
ted them to such diabolical operations.
Among recent important discoveries by
the food analysts is that by Professor Mott,
the United States Government Chemist of
large amounts of lime in the cheap baking
powders. This is, if not the most dangerous,
certainly the most useless adulterant yet
found in the low grade, inferior baking pow
ders. 1t is startling fact that of over one
hundred different brands of baking powder
so far analysed, comprising all of those sold
in this vicinity, not one of them, with the
single exception of the Royal Baking Pow
der, 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 car
bonic 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 painful effects; how
much more serious must these effects be
upon 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 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 kidneys now so preva-
lent. Instances of the most serious affec-
tons 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 even more to be
dreaded than with alum, which has hereto
fore received the most emphatic condemna-
ton 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 impos-
sible 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
II per cent. or one-eighth of the entire
weight of some samples of baking powder
analy zed 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 OBJ
tanned Of well established reputation like
the Royal of whose purity there has never
been and can not be a question, it is proper
to avoid all others.