The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1897-12-10
PURE FOOD.

10 the SUBJECT. Upon adulteration
there are, as one may say, two schools.
The one school adulterates with the
harmless materials and only hurts
your pocket. The other adulterates
with deleterious materials and hurts
the coats of your stomach. The first
school defends itself by stating that
poor people cannot afford to pay the
price for pure article, so an imita-
ton of what they desire is given to
them. 1t is a very philanthropic effort
on the part of the seller, but one ques-
tons whether his philanthrophy
would be as highly appreciated by the
buyer as the seller would like.
The buyer is stringently protected
in France, in England and in large
portion of the States, by laws which
are intended to prevent the seller
from foisting upon him an article
which is not what it represents itself
to be. Thus a mixture of coffee and
chicory is not deleterious. But you
y
it as coffee, any more than you can
sell oleomargarine as butter. You
must label your compound as what it
it.
1t is this that food inspector would
have to make war upon, primarily,
here. Though deleterious adulteration
60 Ca
to any great extent, this form of adul-
teration is. The ground coffee sold
in certain parts of the city is known
to be adulterated. Now such stuff
should not be sold as coffee. The
mixture may be harmless, it may be
cheap, and so suit the pockets of
coffee, but the fraud lies in selling it
as coffee.
If jeweler sells any person dia-
mond ring stating that it is "a genuine
diamond, and it is found afterward
that the stone is paste, he can be pros
ecuted He has sold me something
imitation stone may look very bril-
liant, and may impose on the general
public, but that has nothing to do
with it, a fraud has been committed
and punishment must be melted out
The same reasoning should convict the
seller of adulterated coffee as real
coffee.
The following list gives some of the
commonest adulterants. 1t must be
remembered that this form of adul-
teration falls upon the poorer classes,
and that the Chinese, who run ma
jority of the small stores in the Re-
public, are past masters in the art OF
adulteration:
Wheat Flour.-Potatoes; potato
starch; pea meal; bean meal.
-, Bread.-Boiled and mashed pota-
toes; alum. On. B.-Alum is used, "a
to make poor -four look like good; (2)
to make the loaf take up more water
and weigh more.)
Tea.-Sloe leaves; various other
leaves; English blackthorn leaves;
various poisonous aniline colors, Us
Prussian blue, etc; turmeric; Chinese
clay; sycamore; elm; melon; chest
nut; berch; plum; plumbago; chrome
yellow, etc.
Cotfee.-Roast wheat; roast beans;
roast peas; chicory; acorns; mangel-
ourzel and sawdust. On. BIN cities
where food inspection is neglected
Hogg states that as high as 80 per
per cent of ground coffee sold has
been found to be adulterated.)
Chocolate.-A London report says:
''Tea is adulterated, not only here,
but still more in China; while as to
chocolate the processes employed in
cOrrupting the manufacture are de-
scribed as 'diabolical.' 1t is often
mixed with brick dust to the amount
of ten per cent, and peroxide of iron
twenty-five per cent, and animal fats
of the worst description. In this
country cocoa sold under the names
of fake, graduated, soluble, dietetic,
homeopathic cocoa, etc, are mostly
compounds of sugar, starch, musty
cocoanuts with their shells, old sea
biscuits, coarse branny -four, poor
tallow, etc. Also with venetian red
and other colors."
The above is only little inkling of
what is done in this line. Only anal
ysis and inspection will put any
check upon the traffic, The people
who suffer cannot protect themselves;
is it not the duty of the State to ap-
point proper persons to protect them?
Exporters abroad, who know we have