p. 11 | Fraudulent Foods by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 20, 1905

Fraudulent Foods

By L. A. S.

L. A. S.

In an article contributed to Public Opinion, Dr. H. W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry at Washington, makes some interesting and instructive statements on the subject of “Fraud in Food Manufacture.” Dr. Wiley has given special attention for years to the work of discovering and testing adulterants in foods, and securing legislation for their elimination, and speaks on the subject with undisputed authority.

Among commonly used food adulterants which are injurious to health, Dr. Wiley mentions artificial coloring substances, such as sulphate of copper, which is used “to preserve and intensify the natural green color of beans, peas, and other vegetables.” That this substance “is poisonous in not very large doses,” says Dr. Wiley, “is beyond dispute.”

Many of these substances are known by the manufacturer to be harmful, but the latter excuses himself on the ground that he uses proportionally only a very small quantity. On this point Dr. Wiley says:—

“There can be no excuse, it seems to me, to justify the use of a harmful article even in small quantities. . . . Many of the most violent poisons and also the drugs which are used to heal disease may be taken in minute quantities without producing death or disease. And yet this does not in any wise justify their indiscriminate use in food products.”

The individual manufacturer who uses a minute quantity of poison in his goods, “forgets,” says Dr. Wiley, “that there are a hundred other manufacturers using many different kinds of injurious substances, and all excusing themselves for the same reason. The consumer, however, gets the benefit of all these arguments by finding in his food not one substance, but many substances acknowledged to be injurious, and yet each present only in small quantities. The total of these small quantities, however, becomes a unit which must be regarded as seriously threatening the health of the consumer.”

Of the numerously advertised “pre-digested” foods, Dr. Wiley remarks that the demand for the same “can only be based upon forgetfulness of the fact that abolition of the process of digestion by the use of predigested foods must necessarily lead to weakness, atrophy, and physiological inefficiency of the organs of digestion.” There is, however, he says, a great deal of fraud in the claims made for such foods. There is very little predigestion about the most of them. “Of course,” he observes, “it is possible before the ingestion of a food to convert the starch largely or entirely into sugar, which is one of the steps of natural digestion. There seems to be, however, but little possibility of predigesting the fats or the proteids of the foods in any successful way. Far better, especially in a state of health, to trust to nature’s methods, and each one do his own chewing and his own digesting.”

Dr. Wiley gives “a somewhat incomplete list of the articles commonly used as foods which are very often presented in a deceptive way.” Among those in which an imitation is often palmed off on the purchaser for the real article, he mentions “butter, honey, cane sirup, maple sirup and sugar, jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves, spices of all kinds, and olive-oil.” Among those which often contain chemical preservatives he enumerates “meat, canned vegetables, canned fruits, and catchup.” Among foods that are often artificially colored he names “butter, jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves, canned green vegetables, sausages, hams, ices, candies, and cakes.”

There can be no doubt that a considerable degree of caution in the use of the prepared foods here enumerated is essential to the preservation of health, to say nothing of guarding against imposition. Dr. Wiley’s statements constitute a good argument in favor of a diet of foods which are prepared in one’s own home.