Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-02-17
COFFEE, TEA, MILK, SUGAR.
A Brief Chapter on Food and Its Adult
teratiOns.

teratiOns.
IA cup of coffee" says Alexandra
Dumas, the elder--who, by the way, was
as great a gourmand as he was romancist
ia cup of coffee is the review of the
dinner" M. Dumas was right. OF all
the food authorizations that of coffee is
the most palpable. Not only is the
roasted and ground article adulterated,
but-incredible as it may sound-the
green bean is initiated from common
clay, colored with arsenic If rumor has
it correct there is green coffee manu-
factory in Chicago, where nature is
corrected by machinery Mechani-
cal appliances mold, press and dry Cook
county clay into coffee beans, as it is
said, at a cost of about eight cents a
pound. OF course, this artificial coffee
cannot be used in its purity, or rather
impurity. 1t is used to mix with the
genuine article, and, strange as it may
sound, the clay bean assumes the same
color in roasting that the natural bean
does.
Coffee roasters all over the land adj
NIT that they use stale bread in roasting
coffee. The bread is freed from its crust
and then cut into small cubes. The
roasters claim that the presence of this
bread during the process of the roasting
improves the coffee. OF course, if the
latter is sold in the bean it is impossible
to make the customer pay for stale bread.
but if ground the bread becomes part of
the coffee. Think of NJ. Dumas glow
ing tribute to the after dinner cup and
then imagine a compound made up as
follows: Chcory, peas, beans, date
stones, biscuits, figs, roasted hominy,
burned sugar, acorns, mangel-wurzel,
dandelion, turnips, parsnips, carrots, rye
and potato flour.
The introduction of chicory into coffee
is defended by many roasters on the
ground that it really improves the coffee
and does no mischief to the drinker.
But Dr. Hassell, German authority,
says that chicory in prolonged use is in
furious to health. He claims that the
root-belonging to the class Of radishes,
by the way-produces heartburn, cramp
in the stomach, loss of appetite, acidity
in the mouth, constipation with intermit-
tent diarrhoea, weakness of the limbs,
trembling, sleeplessness, and drunken
cloudiness of the senses. Professor Beer,
the famous Vienna oculist, goes so far as
to claim that chicory in large doses pro-
duces blindness.
The adulteration of teas are even worse
than those of coffees. The practice of
using exhausted tea leaves is SO well
known as scarcely to bear mention.
These exhausted leaves are faced" or
colored, and fixed up with plumbago,
gum, indigo, Prussian blue, turmeric,
China clay, mica, soapstone or French
chalk, sulphate of lime, rose pink, Nene-
tan red, carbonate of copper, arsenite
of copper, chromate and bi-chromate of
potash and carbonate of lime and mag
nesia. Other substitutes for the genuine
article are leaves of the elder, willow,
aloe and other plants and trees, I've tea,
paddy husk, sweeping of tea house floors,
sand, quartz, starch and magnetic oxide
of iron.
The most dangerous of all food swind-
ling practices is that which lowers the
nutritive quality of milk. Its direct eff
feet is largely upon infants and small
children. 1t is the opinion of the ablest
medical observers that half of the infant
mortality in cities is due to sophisticated
milk Professor Wiley, of the United
States department of agriculture, asserts
that lit is doubtful whether 10 per cent.
of the milk which reaches the table is
pure" The principal adulterant of milk
in these modern times is water The
cream is skinned and water is added to
restore the bulk and weight The color
is restored by coloring matter. Flour or
Starch, boiled white carrots, milk of al
monds, Sleeps brains, gum tragacanth,
carbonate of soda and chrome yellow also
enter into milk as adulterants.
There is practically no limit to the
aduteration of sugar. Cane sugar is
manufactured from grape or starch glu-
cose, wheat and potato flour. tapioca
starch, blood, pipe clay, marble dust.
gypsum, bone dust, lead iron, lime and
sand. The confectionery sugar consists
of glucose, terra alba, chalk, arrowroot,
sand, wheat and potato -four, and ny
drafted sulphate of lime. These articles
are colored, as the case may require, by
cochineal, indigo and Prussian blue, car
Donates of copper and lead white lead,
vermillion, gamboge, chromates of lead,
sap green, arsenite of copper, Indian red,
lumber, sienna, Vandyke brown, cobalt,
smalt, Naples yellow, bisulphate of mer-
curry, sulphate of arsenicum, bronze
powders or alloys of copper and zinc.
Speaking upon the law concerning
adulterants Manager Robert NJ Floyd
remarked: ''The English have dealt
with the question of food adulteration
very intelligently. and, as experience has
shown, very profitabiy to the empire
Adulteration of food had grown to enor
nous dimensions some years ago in Eng
land. A parliamentary commission re-
ported that scarcely an article that was
served on the table was free from fraudu
lent admixture or was what it pretended
to be. The result was the passage of al
act of simple and comprehensive nature
which required that all MANUFACTURED
articles of food should be labeled with
statement of all their ingredients, fraud
upon detection, being punished with ex
reme severity. If coffee contained
chicory the manufacturer and sellel
must make this fact distinctly known
The proportion of corn starch employed
in tempering mustard and incidental,
expanding its bulk, must be stated. Ant