The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-27
ADULTERATED FOODS.
Yankee Ingenuity Responsible for Many
 Strange Things to Eat.

Yankee Ingenuity Responsible for Man
 Strange Things to Eat.
 A. l.. Winter of the New Haven agri
 cultural experiment. station addresse
 the Wesleyan Scientific association re
 gently on the subject "Adulterate
 Foods in Connecticut" According t
 the Wesleyan Argus he said in sub
 stance:
 There has been little or no pure foo
 legislation by the federal governmen
 except in regard to tea, oleomargarine
 and filled cheese, but comprehensiv
 state laws are now enforced in Massa
 chusetts, Connecticut Michigan, Ohit
 and Pennsylvania. In 1886 laws wer
 passed In Connecticut, discriminating
 against spurious butter, molasses ant vinegar. In two years this reduced thu
 sale of oleomargarine from 1250 to 40
 tons. Since the pure food law of 1S9
 the New Haven experiment station ha' examined 3,700 sample of foods and ha: | found 1,050, or 2S per cent. to be adul- terated. All samples are purchased from the regular retail stores in the open market
 Tn 1885 nearly half the lard examined was made from cotton seed oil but last year only per cent. was impure. One third the samples of olive oil proved tc be either cotton seed oil, or sesame oil the latter being used very extensively by hair dressers. Sugar is never adul- terated but most maple syrup is artifl- cial. Green tea differs from other kinds in that it Is faced or coated by a preparation of soapstone, prussian blue | and tumerlc which gives the charac- teristic gloss and color as this does not add to the weight it Is not considered adulteration, Lumps of baked dough, chrushed peas, and chickory, often pass for coffee beans. In 1896 nine tenths of all ground coffee was spur ious; last year only one-tenth was spurious.
 Connecticut spends annually $200,000 for spices, one-fourth of which are adulterations. It is stated on credit able authority that about 600 tons of cocoanut shells, obtained from the mills were shreded cocoanut Is pre- pared. are annually powdered for use in spices. After simple grinding the powder of mixed with ground allspice, which 1t resembles very closely.
 "Buckwheat by-products are also utilized. The black hulls, ground with little of the starchy matter, make a very good looking black pepper; the middlings serve as basis for white pepper. Sawdust. and by-products from wheat, corn, rice and other grains have been found in spices sold in Connecticut.
 Tn large cities here are houses which make a speciality of preparing cheap mixtures to be used by spice grinders In their goods. A Philadel- phia house sells for black pepper mix ture of cbarred cocoanut shells and cracker waste; or white pepper, cracker waste; for cayenne, sawdust colored red with an aniline dye; for mustard, wheat flour and tumeric; and for ground nutmegs, pulverized cocoanut shells. One- third of the whole spices examined were grossly adulterated. Cayenne pepper if often tempered with. Among our samples is one consisting largely of buckwheat middlings dyed a brilliant red with some pigment. It looks hotter than the genuine, but its bark Is worse than It's bite.
 "Forty-two out of 61 samples of saul sages were preserved with borax. Only 21 out of 156 brands of catsup examined this year were free from conservatives and nearly all were dyed with red ink. This explains why store catsup keeps better and retains the natural color of the tomato better than the home made product. A catsup preserved with salicylic acid and colored with eosin may be considered as an in- genious combination of a food. a rheu- matism medicine. and writing fluid.
 "As a rule retailers do not know the character of their goods. The knowing party is the manufacturer, but he is usually located outside the state and out of reach of the Connecticut author tiles. So the retailer, because of his ignorance, and the manufacturer, be- cause of his location, both escape fine and Imprisonment.
 ''The most aggressive work is being done by warning the public against suspicious dealers. The experiment. station at New Haven freely distributes annual reports of It's Investigations to all who care to read them. Tn these re- ports are given particulars with regard to each sample examined--the name of the manufacturer if this can be learned, the name and address of the dealer, and whether the food was pure or adul- terated. Customers are using the sta- ton reports as guide to making their and fraudulent dealers are finding out that this kind of advertising does not pay and that further attempts at deception will be useless"