178 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



say this : when I a\ as a student in Harvard University some 

 years ago, before tlie days of preserving codfish with borax, 

 I enjoyed that article of food immensely, but I have rather 

 lost my taste for it now. It is not as good as it was in 

 those days without borax ; and you can preserve it without 

 borax. I know when they put it in it looks awfully nice, 

 and you don't know it is there. That is the danger of these 

 things, — they don't reveal themselves ; they have no prop- 

 erties of odor or taste by which you know them. You eat 

 a piece of codfish with 8 per cent of borax, and you can't 

 taste it ; but if it is salt you are likely to know it, and you 

 soak that salt out before you use the fish. Common salt is 

 a preservative, too ; but it is a necessity in our food, and 

 borax is not. Common salt in excess is injurious ; borax is 

 injurious in any degree. Take all the common salt out of 

 our food, and we wouldn't any of us live long, because di- 

 gestion in the stomach takes place by means of hydrochloric 

 acid set free from salt ; and if you take the salt away there 

 is no way of getting the acid, and one would starve to death, 

 although with an abundance of food. But if 3'ou use too 

 much salt you injure 3 ourself. This is used as an argument 

 in favor of preservatives. They say salt is injurious, and 

 should not be used, if borax shouldn't. But that is not logical, 

 because one is a necessity to existence, and the other is not. 

 The presence of any preservative in any food, which is 

 without taste or odor so that its presence may be known, is 

 wrong. For example, sulphites, which give the beautiful 

 color to Hamburg steak which j^ou buy in the market. 

 You never saw meat so rosy and red as Hambm-g steak is ; 

 and it keeps that way for weeks, if you leave it alone. 

 Why? Because it is loaded up with sulphite of soda. Xow, 

 get your own Hamburg made, or see it made from fresh 

 meat, and don't buy it from that Avhich is red, because it is 

 colored artificially, and is harmful. That substance is posi- 

 tively injurious to health, and therefore should be excluded 

 from meats. The only permissible way to keep meats, 

 aside from canning, cold storage and desiccation, is by the 

 old-fashioned method of salt, sugar, vineo-ar and w^ood 

 smoke. Those are all condinicntal substances, — every one 



