River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1886-09-16
Food Frauds.
THg SHAMEFUL USE OF LINE AND ALUM IN
CHEAP BAKING POWDERS.

THg SHAMEFUL USE OF LINE AND ALUM 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 prepare
tion 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, 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 bak-
ing powder. 1t is a startling fact
that of over one hundred different
brands of baking powder so far an
alyzed, comprising all those sold in
this vicinity, not one of them, with
the single exception of the Royal Bak-
ing 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 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 quick
ly rot the flesh from the bones of dead
subjects. A small quantity of dry
lime upon the tongue, or in the eye,
produces a painful effect; how much
more serious must these effects be on
the delicate membrane of the stomach,
intestines and kidneys, more particu-
larry 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 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
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 of its imjuri-
GUS 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 adgiteration
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
established reputation, like the Royal,
of whose purity there has never been
and cannot be a question, it is proper
to avoid all others.