Food Preservatives. 89 



time portions were tested with fresh pepsin solutions. It was 

 found that fibrin^ soaked in a solution of formaldehyde as dilute 

 as one to one thousand, for a day, was hardened to such an extent 

 that it could not be digested. 



Analogous results were obtained with milk and with the milk 

 curdling ferment rennin. The rennin was not affected, even after 

 exposure for several weeks to a five per cent solution of formal- 

 dehyde. But milk, to which formaldehyde had been added in the 

 proportion of one to one thousand and allowed to stand for a day, 

 could not be coagulated with fresh rennin solution. Furthermore, 

 such milk could not be digested with pepsin. 



It is very easy to understand why so many bottle-fed infants 

 have suffered and died in the past few years. It might be men- 

 tioned that formaldehyde is the principal ingredient of most of 

 the embalming fluids on the market ; it is also used extensively 

 by pathologists and in museums because of its hardening and 

 preserving action on proteid material. 



One of the chief arguments against the use of chemical pre- 

 servatives is that some food-stuffs that are unfit for consumption 

 may, by the addition of a preservative to check further decompo- 

 sition, be brought into apparently fit condition and then be put 

 upon the market. Sodium benzoate in tomato pulp furnishes an 

 excellent example of this. If the tomatoes are not worked up 

 promptly into the final product — catsup, for instance — bacteria 

 multiply rapidly and soon the material is in a more or less decom- 

 posed and decomposing condition ; a little benzoate of soda is 

 added to check further fermentation, and the mass in a more or 

 less decayed condition is made into catsup. Last year the Ten- 

 nessee Pure Food and Drugs Department examined twenty-eight 

 samples of catsup ; twenty-five of them showed a high bacterial 

 count, indicating that they had been made from decayed mate- 

 rial; but this material had received the benzoate treatment and 

 then in varying stages of decomposition had been made into 

 catsup. The labels on the bottles stated that they contained one- 

 tenth of one per cent of benzoate of soda, but there was nothing 

 to indicate what sort of material had been used ; and further, of 

 these twenty-five labeled as containing one-tenth of one per cent, 

 fifteen had in reality a larger quantity — some having more than 

 three times that amount. 



