Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-07-06
CHAPTER 81

SI1AE OIL
The Poison Squads Which Have
Given Semiscientific or Unscientiflc
Data to Dietitians Have Proved Worth
less as a Means of Determining the
True Character of Any Food or Food
Preservative-Short- Time Experiments
on Healthy Adults Cannot Revel In
formation that Applies to the Year-In
and Year-Out Experience of the Rank
and File of Humanity.
Under the inspiration of an aroused
profession of school teachers, the
school children. familiar with the poi
son squad cages of the school house
basement. will learn that human poi
son squads have been organized at
regular intervals for the purpose of
subjecting healthy young men to a
diet of adulterated food in the interest
Of science.
They will learn that after a period
of five or six weeks the usual results
have been announced, frequently to
the effect that the members of the
squad betrayed no noticeable symp-
toms and experienced no injurious re-
suits"
They will learn that such reports
have appeared in thousands of news
papers, quieting the public mind, dis
arming anxiety and suspicion, and
sometimes causing the cautious house
wife to forget the necessity of watch
fulness in selecting her kitchen sup
plies.
They will learn that these poison
squads have never fought it out to the
finish, and that the brave youths who
have been fed with these doses of ben
zoate, boraX, copper sulphate, sulphur
dioXide, aluminium sulphate, coal tar
dyes, hydrogenated fats and other food
preservatives have never taken all of
these delectable substances at any one
time nor during any one test.
They will learn that the poison
squad is always confined to one food
drug, never partakins Of any other
drug during its scientific experience.
They will learn that it has been the
custom in the past to disband the
squad before airy subtle, slow-moving,
insidious process might bring about
serious injury to its members, thereby
giving the food sophisticator plenty of
so-called scientific justification for his
assertion that the occasional cry
against preservatives, food chemicals.
mineral dyes and denatured food is a
bugaboo
IHey Will learn Inat all the people
in the world are not healthy young
men and that all of them do not stop
eating at the end of a test lasting five
or six weeks.
They will learn that some of the
people in the world are babies; some
are school children like themselves;
some are nursing mothers; some are
about to become mothers and some
have reached the age where natural
vigor is no longer sufficiently active to
resist even temporary abuse.
They will learn that Notwithstanding
the fact that all poison squad expert
ments have been temporary affairs.
there is nevertheless. on a wonderfully
organized scale, poison squad among
little children which has never been
abandoned and which has numbered
among its victims in the United States
100000 during the last four years.
They will learn that every time the
law makes the use of a food chemical
legal or every time it winks at an
abuse that denatures a food it makes
a permanent poison squad of the en-
tire country, not for a few expert
mental weeks for few vigorous young
men with a single food chemical, but
for the entire lifetime of all the men
women and children in the country
with a combination of all the food
chemicals now used legally or illegally
by an army of food manufacturers.
They will learn that all the little