47 



FOOD PRODUCTS ADULTERATED AND ADULTERANTS 



COMMONLY USED. 



Under this bead 1 will eudeavor to give a list of the food products 

 in which adulterations have been frequently practiced, as well as ;t list 

 of the adulterants and cheap substitutes in common use. I will quote 

 freely from the advance sheets of Professor Sharpless's report, as this 

 gentleman has gone very fully into the subject. As he has already 

 been quoted in the section of this report next preceding, it will he un- 

 necessary to introduce him further to the reader. The same may be 

 said in regard to Dr. Beckwith, of the Ohio Board, from whose report 

 we shall make some interesting extracts on the use of glucose especially, 

 and also as to the percentage of various food products subjected to 

 adulteration. I will also include a list of articles found to be specially 

 liable to adulteration by the chemists of the Massachusetts Board of 

 Health. To this long list we will have to add certain sections treating 

 especially of canned goods and lard adulterations and some notes culled 

 here and there from recognized and competent authorities in regard to 

 the extent and character of these adulterations. 



With these notes and figures before him, the legislator will be able 

 to appreciate the extent to which misbranding, sophistication, adulter- 

 ation, and general debasing of food products is indulged in throughout 

 the country, and it is to be hoped that this section of the report alone 

 will be sufficient to impress upon the minds of all who read it the ur- 

 gent necessity for adequate national legislation on this subject, which 

 is of such profound interest to every individual of our vast population. 

 Legislation capable of preventing these frauds will mean not only the 

 saving of millions of money to the public, but the preservation of the 

 health of our people. 



To quote first from Professor Sharpless. The professor classsifies 

 under the three heads of deleterious, fraudulent, and accidental. 



Under the first he includes such adulterations as copper in pickles, 

 red lead in cayenne pepper, arsenical colors in candy, water in milk 

 (deleterious because diminishing the food value of the product and u so 

 starving children who are fed on it)." He also includes in this class of 

 deleterious all sophistications of drugs and medicines, u since the phy- 

 sician depends greatly upon the purity of these in regulating the size 

 of the dose, and if of inferior strength they do not produce the desired 

 effect, and thus become negatively injurious." 



The fraudulent he defines as non-injurious, but " a fraud upon the 

 pocket," and to this class belong the great majority of adulterations. 



To this class belong such articles as package coffee, which is generally a compound 

 which contains no coffee; salad-oil, which is frequently free from olive-oil, consist- 

 ing mainly of cotton-seed oil; mustard diluted with flour and colored with turmeric ; 

 the mixture of inferior grades of goods with higher grades of the same material, 

 the mixture being represented as pure and of full of strength; the mixture of corn- 

 Miup or glucose with cane-sirup, the mixture being sold as pure cane-sirup; the 

 sale of oleomargarine or suet-butter as genuine butter, and the adulteration of spices 

 with ship-bread. 



