PRESERVED FOODS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 140, 14 June 1924, Page 20

PRESERVED FOODS

THEIR HEALTH VALUE

TRIBUTE FROM A GREAT

DOCTOR

CORNED BEEF AND THE WAR,

CfBOII ODR OWN eORttKSPOHDBKT.J

LONDON, 17th April.

Sir James Crichton-Browne,. a man eminent in medical circles, has contributed.a very useful article to the. "Morning Post" on the health value of preserved foods. , He points out that, the process of preservation has made accessible to the poor viands which were formerly the luxuries of the rich. The attempts recently made to depreciate preserved foods and to create prejudice against them are unjustifiable, and may prove mischievous. The Ministry of Health in its last report declared that there has been an enormous*, improvement in the quantity, quality, and variety of foods employed by the English people, and that in buying food the worker is buying health and energy, the power to be well and to work well. No small part of the. improvement thus referred to has been in the quantity, quality, and variety of preserved- foods. Sir James describes Napoleon as the first parent of the preserved food industry. .With an eye to the maintenance of his big armies, he offered a prize for the_ discovery of a method of preserving perishable foods, and this it was that led j Nicolas Appert to devise his process' of sterilisation by means of heat in her^ metically-sealed containers. It is Appert's process as interpreted, amended, and amplified in the light of the discoveries of another great Frenchman, Pasteur, that has gradually evolved into our present perfect technique. AN OFFICIAL. SUMMARY. In connection with modern warfares, the employment of preserved foods suddenly expanded into colossal proportions. It would, perhaps, be going too far to say that corned beef won the Great War, but it is certain that without it we could nbt have maintained as we did snch.huge armies in the various fields of conflict. Wholesale and palatable nourishment was supplied in the form of preserved foods, and that the utmost care and scientific precision were employed in their preparation is made certain by the testimony of those who were officially charged with their inspection. Sir William Wilcox, the Home Office Adviser, has said that out of 20,000,000 cases of preserved foods supplied to the troops during the war there resulted only seven cases of alleged food poisoning, and thesecases be had personally investigated, and was able to affirm that each one of them was duo, not to the'food, but to human germ carriers, who had infected the food during the cooking process. . .

HARMLESS PTOMAINES.

Ptomaine has long been a fearsome word, but it is now known that ptomaines are practically harmless, and that when food poisoning takes place it is not so much the chemical products of putrefaction that are to be blamed as certain organisms or bacilli accidentally introduced into them. In properly-pre-pared and protected foods there can never beany approach to putrefaction, ftind peccant bacilli of the Gaertner group fire much more likely to find their way into fresh than into preserved foods. Properly prepared preserved foods, art up to the,, moment of consumption inviolate, but fresh foods are being constantly exposed to contamination from the* air and by unclean handling. In the more important outbreaks of illness caused by, or attributed to, food reported to the Ministry of Health in 1921, and investigated, there were six deaths, and 'of these four were' due to fresh foods, filleted ■ fish, codfish, cockles, mutton and beef, and only two to potted meat. " Instead of fidgeting about preserved foods, we should fix our attention on these fresh foods. which we have been too much in the habit of eating complacently, asking no questions for conscience's sake, but in which often lurk the real dangers to the public health. Let us see to our milk supply^ which is not only responsible for much infantile mortality, but sows in our babies the seeds of disease, which will declare itself ' during childhood, adolescence, and manhood, besides occasionally spreading typhoid fever. Let us se to our slaughterhouses, so that no unsound and diseasetainted meat may be passed through them. Xet us see to our shops, so that they may no longer harbour fly-blown and dust and germ coated foods. Let us tee to our domestic larders and kitchens, t,o that they no longer harbour diseasecarrying vermin and admit foul air. Let us see to all those engaged in handling our food, so'that they are in good health, and'free from the traces of some bygone illness." THE ADMIRALTY'S EXPERIENCE. Mr. Underhill, technical officer of the Admiralty, thus records his expediences: "From my long experience in '.he examination of a considerable var>tty of products in enormous quantities, I should like to. place on record my opinion that in the preparation of the •various articles every care is taken in the factories of firms of repute, and I cannot recall a single instance in which in the course of my duties I have ever discovered foreign or objectionable matters in the tins examined, or a single authentic case of serious illness arising from the consumption of any' of the pro° ducts from faulty manufacture." j Sir James concludes that the important points as regards preserved foods are that the public should stick to wellfood generally it should insist on the food generally it should insist in the stringent observance of measures calculated to safeguard it from pollution. "We must go back to Leviticus and realise the guiltiness of touching ' the unclean things; whether it be a carcass cf an unclean beast, or a carcass of unclean cattle, or the carcass of unciean creeping things, or the uncleanness' of man.' As sceptism and anti-scepticism, which have worked such wonders in sur- i ger.v, should enter more and more largely ■ into our daily lives. These, generally diffused, must be salutary, for then our siums would cease to be slummy and our foods would be dealt with from first to last with the utmost scrupulosity."