Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1909. 
Food  and  Drug  Adulteration. 
271 
of  food  and  drink.  These  sweetening  substances  are  known  to  the 
trade  under  various  names,  the  most  frequently  used  being  saccha- 
rin. The  fact  that  saccharin  has  absolutely  no  food  value  and 
is  used  to  replace  sugar,  which  has  a  high  food  value,  should  alone 
be  sufficient  reason  for  its  prohibition  in  general  food  products, 
such  as  canned  goods  and  soft  drinks,  but  when  we  take  into 
account  that  the  investigations  of  foreign  authorities  have  so  em- 
phatically placed  the  ban  upon  it  as  to  prohibit  even  its  importation 
into  such  countries  as  France  and  Italy,  there  should  be  no  further 
hesitation  in  refusing  to  countenance  its  use. 
Gluten  flour  is  a  term  used  to  designate  a  flour  which  is  especially 
high  in  the  constituent  known  as  gluten  and  in  which  the  proportion 
of  starch  has  been  correspondingly  reduced.  Such  a  product  is 
frequently  recommended  as  an  article  of  diet  where  starchy  foods 
are  to  be  avoided  as  far  as  possible.  Several  years  ago  nearly 
every  sample  of  gluten  flour  was  found  to  be  of  little  more  value 
than  ordinary  flour,  but  at  the  present  time  there  is  more  general 
conformity  with  the  standard  of  35  per  cent.,  which  has  been  set  as 
the  minimum  limit  for  the  amount  of  gluten  that  this  product 
should  contain. 
The  subject  of  meat  extracts,  which  are  used  so  frequently  by 
those  who  are  in  an  enfeebled  state  of  health,  is  another  one  in 
which  great  improvement  has  been  noticed.  The  absence  of  definite 
standards  led  to  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  numerous  products 
of  variable  value,  some  of  which  were  made  by  the  concentration 
of  corned  beef  liquor  and  which  therefore  contained  saltpetre  in 
appreciable  amounts.  While  there  is  still  room  for  considerable 
improvement  in  this  direction,  I  believe  that  all  of  the  second 
grade  brands  are  now  correctly  labelled,  so  that  the  purchaser  may 
know  the  quality  of  the  article  supplied  and  may  be  forewarned 
of  the  presence  of  substances  foreign  to  a  high-grade  product.  It 
would  be  well  if  it  were  a  more  generally  recognized  fact  that  meat 
extracts,  as  a  rule,  possess  very  little  actual  food  value,  but  are 
principally  useful  for  their  stimulating  properties,  and  that  some  of 
them  contain  as  much  as  one-fourth  of  their  weight  of  salt.  The 
price  at  which  they  are  sold  averages  more  than  $2.00  a  pound, 
so  that  the  addition  of  salt  beyond  the  amount  necessary  to  season 
is  a  source  of  added  profit  for  the  manufacturer. 
Five  years  ago  the  addition  of  such  preservative  substances  as 
boric  acid  and  sodium  sulphite  was  of  common  occurrence  in  fresh 
