p. 310 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 29, 1867

Adulterations in Tea, Coffee, &c.

Tea and coffee have long been the prey of the adulterator. Some people imagine that the green color is given by drying the tea upon copper plates; this is a vulgar error. The Chinese themselves, knowing the demand there is in England for moderately-priced green tea, paint black teas to imitate it in a very ingenious manner. They take a mixture of Prussian blue and gypsum, in the proportion of three parts of the former to one of the latter. This coloring matter is thrown among the teas whilst they are roasting, the workman turning the leaves about until his hands are quite blue. Some people cannot understand how it is that “green tea” keeps them awake. Perhaps they will now see the reason. The Chinese never drink this colored tea themselves; they only prepare it to suit the tastes of the “outer barbarians,” and surely they have some warrant for so naming us. The gunpowder is manufactured both in England and China to mix with other teas. It often has but little tea in it, being compounded of sand, tea-dust, dirt and broken-down portions of leaves, worked together with gum into grains. When it is intended to mix it with “scented caper,” this stuff is “faced” with black lead; when with gunpowder, turmeric, Prussian blue and chalk are used. Some tea is quite as objectionable and injurious as adulterated spirits—a fact which has never been turned against the teetotallers. Assam tea is generally pure.

Coffee is permitted to be adulterated by the government with chicory, but then the fact must be so stated upon the paper or canister. This mixing opens the door to shameful adulteration, as the chicory is much cheaper than the coffee, and the grocer too often takes care to put more of the former into the mixture than the latter. But chicory is not the worst adulteration that coffee is liable to: mangold-wurzel, roasted wheat flour, red earth, roasted horse-chestnuts, and we are even told that in some neighbourhoods baked horse’s and bullock’s blood are used for this purpose. Our authority for this last statement is a work by Mr. P. G. Simmonds, entitled, “Coffee as it is, and as it ought to be,” in which he says, “In various parts of the metropolis, but more especially in the east, are to be found ‘liver bakers.’ These men take the livers of oxen and horses, bake them and grind them into powder, which they sell to the low-priced coffee-shop-keepers at from fourpence to sixpence per pound, horse’s liver coffee being the highest priced. It may be known by allowing the coffee to stand until cold, when a thick pellicle of skin will be found on the top.” He adds, “It goes further than coffee, and is generally mixed with chicory and other vegetable imitations of coffee.” The analytic commissioner of the Lancet, Dr. Hassal, actually has tested this horrible stuff, which we will believe without his assurance to possess “a very disagreeable animal smell.” The puzzle is how people can be found to drink such horrible decoctions even in the poorest coffee houses. The milk is always adulterated largely with water, which, at sixpence a quart, is rather too bad.

The bright green color to be observed in pickles bought at the shops is produced by boiling a slip of copper with them. Thus copper is often present in poisonous quantities. Avoid, therefore, good reader, very green pickles, with the greatest care. The presence of this adulteration may be very simply detected. A bright knitting-needle allowed to stand in the jar for a few hours comes out with a coating of the metal upon it, provided the adulteration exists. But copper is not only to be found in our pickles, it always exists in the green ornaments of sweetmeats, in preserved, bottled fruit that should appear green; or where the preserve is red, logwood, or infusion of beetroot, gives the deep, rich color that the housewife envies so, and, luckily for herself and household, fails to produce in her home-made preserves. It is not pleasant to find that we may be partaking of the acetate of copper in our pickles and tarts. We are told that much of the cheap preserves is sweetened with glucose, a substitute for sugar, but very much cheaper, and possessed of far less sweetening power. The adulteration with the poisonous pigments of the sweets poor little children innocently suck is a most diabolical crime; but we are glad to see that the use of green colors is much less frequently employed than it used to be, even in the third-rate sweetshops. Still, occasionally, high-colored sugar ornaments are to be seen, the color being metallic instead of vegetable, as it should be. Among these colors there are at least three highly poisonous—yellow, made of chromate of lead; green, arsenite of copper; and red, oxide of lead. The most delicate and delicious essence of jargonel pear-drops and essence of pine-apple are made from a preparation of ether and rancid cheese and butter. When we see how liable we are to be slowly poisoned in our food, it is not wonderful that people living in civilized countries should suffer in their health.—From Cassell’s Magazine.