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THE QUANTITY OF BUTTER FAT IN ICE CREAM. 
The data which have been cited indicate that there is no tendency 
in the trade to secure any uniform quantity or standard of butter fat 
in ice creams. The authorities show that an ice cream may have 
from a mere trace of butter fat up to 17 or 20 per cent. The con- 
sumer, therefore, has no indication in buying a so-called ice cream 
of the quantity of cream or butter fat which he is about to secure, 
nor would a physician in ordering ice cream for a patient have any 
information of the character of the food that the patient was going 
to eat; assuming that he is getting a genuine ice cream lie may be 
giving an invalid a lot of wholly indigestible materials which his 
stomach in its weakened condition would be utterly unable to digest. 
The claim that the manufacture of genuine ice cream will make it 
too expensive for common use does not seem to be based on any re- 
liable data. That real cream sells for more than an imitation and that 
it should sell for more no one will deny. If a man buys two volumes 
of a mixture containing 8 per cent of butter fat as ice cream he may 
pay no more for it than a man who buys one volume of a real ice 
cream. The answer to the question of increased cost would very 
properly be diminished volume. It would surely be advantageous 
to the consumer if he put into his stomach a less volume of the frozen 
mixture than he usually does when he buys an ice cream of com- 
merce in which water is the chief constituent. 
The claim that the dairies of the country would be unable to fur- 
nish cream for making genuine ice cream is wholly unfounded. The 
dairies of the country are interested as well as the sanitarians in hav- 
ing ice cream pure and true to the name. They will be able to 
supply the legitimate demand for the cream of which the article is 
made. 
The protests against the standard for butter fat fixed by the Sec- 
retary of Agriculture under authority of Congress, in so far as the 
briefs arid arguments which have been offered are concerned seem 
to be wholly without merit. The same protests were made against 
fixing a legal standard of fat in milk, against the elimination of the 
quantity of water in butter, against the requirements for purity of 
almost every food product. Whenever an attempt is made to fix 
a standard of purity for a food product all the people who are en- 
gaged in making a debased article of that kind enter the same kind 
of a plea. There seems to be no basis for a protest of this kind. 
There is no ethical or legal reason why the purchaser of ice cream 
should not have some definite idea of what he is getting. The con- 
ditions which obtained before the passage of the food and drugs act 
can not be urged in extenuation of their continuance under the pure- 
