THE COLOUR COMPLEX

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 63, 11 September 1937, Page 18

THE COLOUR COMPLEX

The demand for colour in a kipper—l which would be .safeguarded from fraudulent imitations by Mr. Mac-, quis'teii's Sea Fish (Dyeing and Colour, ing .Prohibition) Bill—is one of the more: rational of similar public; de« mands, states the "Manchester Guard-; ian." For the depth of colour indicates,' or should indicate, the degree to. which the fish has been smoked. But in other cases the public's colour complex leads to less desirable pro-, cesses and chemicals are used to impart what is regarded as the correct shade. Mr. Holbrook Jackson once told a Royal Society of Arts audience that "different tints for cheese and bacon are fashionable in different places, and kippers, sausages, and potted. meats have each a carefullyconsidered colour scheme. A.Dutch firm'has issued a card giving eight different shades of yellow which provision merchants should study before laying in stocks of butter."

The public has deprived itself more than once of really fine juicy oranges because the colour of the new fruit was not the rich orange to which it was accustomed. This preference for colour over content has before now resulted in hawkers treating pale oranges with permanganate of potash or bismarck brown.

Even the highly respectable chemist is not always above pandering to the public taste for colour. At an exhibition .a few years ogo coloured aspirin tablets were on view'^-brown and pink and mauve. Asked for the reason, the stallholder mentioned in confidence that such tablets were supplied only to doctors, who gave them to people who had an anti-ajpirin complex.