ADULTERANTS 349 



If the material sinks, leaving a brownish trace in the water as it sinks, 

 it probably contains a large amount of chicory. If it floats for five 

 minutes, it is coffee. What happens to the specimen you tested ? 



Place half a teaspoonful of mashed canned peas or beans in a beaker 

 containing one teaspoonful of water and 10 drops of hydrochloric 

 acid. Set the beaker in a dish of boiling water. Drop a new iron 

 nail into the mixture. Boil for ten minutes. Stir constantly. If the 

 nail turns green, copper has been used to color the peas. 



Put a teaspoonful of milk in a beaker. Add twice the amount of 

 hydrochloric acid to which a drop of ferric chloride has been added. 

 Mix by rotating the beaker gently. Place the beaker in a pan of 

 boiling water and leave for five minutes. If there is a purple or 

 lavender color, formaldehyde was present in the milk. 



Adulteration. The substitution of some cheaper substance, 

 the subtraction of some valuable substance from a food, or 

 the addition of poisonous or decomposed substances, with a 

 view to cheating the purchaser, is known as adulteration. Ex- 

 amples of common substitutions in foods are cottonseed oil 

 for olive oil ; apple parings or core for other fruits in jellies ; sac- 

 charine, which is several hundred times sweeter than sugar, 

 in candy, ginger ale, and other drinks ; glucose or brown sugar 

 for maple sugar; and cereals, which cost less, for meats in 

 sausage. 



Other examples of added ingredients which may be harmful to 

 health are arsenic, salicylate acid, borax, and boracic acid. 



Still another type of adulteration is seen in the mixing or adding 

 to the substance of colors of dyes. Such artificial coloring is seen 

 in the addition of copper sulphate to give a green color to canned 

 vegetables, annatto to give color to butter, coal-tar dyes of many 

 colors to give coloring to candy, jellies, flavoring extracts, soft 

 drinks, and even meats or sausage. 



Examples of the taking away of a valuable part of the food are 

 seen in the abstraction of cocoa butter from chocolate, butter fats 

 from milk, or the essential oils from spices. 



Probably the food which has suffered most from adulteration 

 is milk, as water can be added without the average person being 

 the wiser. By means of an inexpensive instrument known as a 

 lactometer, this cheat can easily be detected. Before the Pure 

 Food Law was passed in 1906, milk was frequently treated with 



