Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-08-17

ed July IS, 1907. Yet sulphurous
acid is still in use.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars
were taken from the appropriation
established by Congress with which
to enable the Bureau of Chemistry
to prosecute food adulterations. This
money, by a peculiar system of Jug
Cling, was turned over to the referee
board, which, in all these strangely
silent years, kept its findings to itself.
In the meantime the housewife who
does not know that sulphurous acid
is present in many foods now pur-
chased by her for home use has a
means of knowing the truth, even
though to take advantage of such
means necessitates the exercise of
considerable energy and trouble.
The wholesale container or shipping
case, usually in the form OF wooden
box, in which the chemically treated
! fruit is shipped from the sulphur
plants to the wholesale grocer and
delivered by the wholesale grocer to
the retail grocer, is marked with the
contains SO2," or "bleached with
sulphur" or treated with sulphur
dioxide."
DoubtlessIy the housewife, who does
not know that sulphurous acid is en-
ployed in food products for the three
|
making them look better than they
are and of adding to them large guam
titles of water which can be sold at
food prices, will find it difficult to sud
denly change her attitude toward the
outward characteristics of many foods
with which she is familiar in order
to arrive at some actual knowledge
| of the facts.
However, it can be stated as a fun
damental proposition that when the
housewife sacrifices food value for
food ornamentation she is indulging
| in perilous extravaganza.
When she shells her wheat and
bleaches it to a pure white with
nitrites her finished accomplishment is
no longer flour.
She has sacrificed both the outer
or mineral coat and the middle or
protein coat upon the prohtless altar
of beauty
Sooner or later she must realize
that food that looks fit for the gods
| is i'll adapted for the nourishment of
mere physical man, who possesses
neither the wings of angels nor the
intelligence of the Deity.
She takes pride in emphasizing the
clearness and transparency of the
drinking water provided for her fam
! ily-the flood water that has not been
contaminated" by Mother Earth; she
does not stop to consider the fact that
| the more the water is nursed by
Mother Earth, the more mineral salts
| it dissolves. and the higher its refrac-
tive index.
The more transparent the drinking
water, the less power ii holds for re-
plenishing the tissue salts lost through
The urine and feces.
With lofty disdain she refuses to
eat natural brown rice, insisting that
| it's nutritious brown coat be polish
ed off so that it will look pretty and
white.
She rejects the nutritious rice pol
ishings, so rich in mineral content,
as food fit only for hogs.
The worthless rice starch granules
are good enough for her children. Yet,
when the Philippine Islands had been
devastated by beri-beri her own gov
ernment appreciated the dangers of
the snow white food so pleasing to the
eye and took radical action against
the abuse.
Ugly brown maple syrup loses it's
refinement of taste when 1t is refined
in color. When it is made as white
as cane sugar or beet sugar it is just
as sweet as cane sugar or beet sugar
but it has lost the characteristic flavor
of the maple just as the granulated
sugar of the modern diningroom has
lost the soul of the cane.
She fails to recognize the fact that
purely ornamental food belongs under
glass case in the parlor, not upon
the well-filled board.
She admires the wondrously beau |
tiful peacock, but eats the flesh of the |
homely turkey.
She insists on chalky white bread, |
but is not shocked in the presence of |
dusky devil cake.
The farmer who would not dream |
of coloring his wheat straw with coal |
toY en hat hi mia Tl1f hffSlE
they were eating grass, asks that his |
manufactured jam be colored a pas
sionate red with gas house refuse.
The housewife does not know, but |
she ought to know. that the farmer |
knows that his butter, saturated with |
effort to keep up appearances has not /
the unassailable social standing en-
joyed by his own pale, creamy pro-
duct
The farmer knows that the brilliant |
yellow does not improve the flavor of |
his butter, but on the contrary al
lows every opportunity for fraud.
He knows that the meat of the OK
when freshly slaughtered is a brown
ish red. Yet, he encourages the
butcher to substitute a scarlet hue
with sulphites as if the poor beast
had died of coal gas poisoning.
From Brooklyn tons of anhydrous
SuipAllc are SulppSd l4iEOuSH-
out the country to the hamburger
artists of America.
The breast muscles of birds that use
their wings are dark. White breast
meat of the chicken is in a lingering
state of degeneration caused by the /
time-unhonored atrophy of disuse.
Lazy people who sit in rocking /
chairs would not make good stew for
cannibals, although their flesh would
become paler and paler, whittier and
whittier the longer they sat before go
ing to the caldron.
TIL housewife knows that if coal
dealer painted stones black and sold
them to her husband as coal her hus-
band would proclaim the fraud far
and wide and Immediately seek the
commissioner of weights and meas
ures or some other official bureau for
aid.
Coal is judged by its heat units,
but food is judged by its personal
appearance.
The housewife who would get to
the bottom of the sulphur bleached
fruits of the market place must be
taught the truth concerning odor and
taste as we'll as the lies concerning
Ornament"
AS long as she demands that the
wealth of the fields be poisoned with
crafty dyes great chemists will pros