GENERAL PAPERS 111 
There has been a temptation to sell food under a misleading 
label. Apples grown in Missouri are marked as if grown in 
New York. Sardines in olive oil are really sprats in cottonseed 
oil, ete. 
Again foods are ‘‘made up” to sell just as the actress “makes 
up” for her part on the stage and by the use of similar dyes, 
cosmetics, and beautifiers. The officials condemn this pro- 
cedure on the ground that the food is “mixed, colored, pow- 
dered, coated, stained, or otherwise treated in a manner where- 
by damage or inferiority is concealed or whereby it is made to 
appear better than it really is.” Thus, “orangeade”’ is made by 
the use of well water of doubtful origin, tartaric acid, and 
coal tar orange dye, on which liquid calmly float day after day 
the same identical slices of orange pulp. 
It is probably heresy to say it in a great wheat-producing 
state, but there is really no excuse for bleaching good, whole- 
some wheat flour. Is it not painting the rose? Simply because 
there is a supposed demand for white flour, why treat the pro- 
duct of nature with chemicals to satisfy such a depraved taste? 
Maraschino cherries are first bleached by chemicals, then dyed 
some particular shade to suit the “color scheme” of the hostess. 
Oranges and grape fruit are picked while really green, 
rushed to market in cars so arranged that the fruit will be 
“sweated” in transit, and so appear to be ripe when they reach 
the breakfast table. The fine flavor of the fruit has never been 
developed, hence they are dry and tasteless. 
The sale of light-weight packages has been largely corrected 
by the law which requires the weight to be stated on the pack- 
age. The itinerant vender may, however, still peddle from 
house to house and sell you his produce in a badly dented tin 
measure or perhaps thirty-six pounds of apples in a so-called 
bushel basket, for the forty-eight pounds required by law. 
These are a few of the reasons why the state must supervise 
the sale of food products. 
The author has had occasion recently to revise a book writ- 
ten about ten years ago, and was surprised to see how many 
statements made at that time in regard to the adulteration of 
foods were no longer necessary or even true. That is what 
food legislation has accomplished. 
