TRICKS WITH FOOD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21247, 29 July 1932, Page 11

TRICKS WITH FOOD

METHODS OF ADULTERATION WIDE EXTENT OF FRAUD PRACTICES OF EARLIER DAYS The many ingenious ways in which foodstuffs were adulterated 100 years or more ago were described by Mr. A. J. Parker, public analyst, in a lecture given last evening to a meeting of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Sanitary Inspectors' Association. " Until strong legislation was passed as the result of continual pressure by medical men, food adulteration was rampant in England," Mr. Parker said. Tea suffered very frequent adulteration. The art had been fully understood among the Chinese from very early ages. Sometimes "tef," was made from tea leaf dust, foreign leaves and sand, stuck with starch or gum into little masses, and afterwards coloured black or green. Blacklead, as used for the family grate, was used for black tea. In England, leaves of willow, poplar, plane and several other trees were prepared, coloured like ordinary tea and mixed with it. Another fraud was the use of exhausted tea leaves, bought at 3d a lb. from hotels or coffeehouses and taken to factories, where they were mixed with gum solution, redried and coloured or faced with rose-pink and black lead. Coffee was another commodity which, until modern analysis had made the detection of all adulterations much easier, had suffered. Wheat, peas, beans, rye, acorns, and even sawdust, prepared and roasted, had all been used in the past as adulterants. Cocoa had not escaped the adulterants. One of the earlier analytical authorities, before the present safeguarding laws were passed, had found in cocoa flour, starch, sugar, lard, tallow, red ochre, Venetian red pigment and other oxides of. iron. Flour sometimes had beanmeal added to it, while other cereals such as rico, barley, rye, Indian corn, and potato had been included in its composition. Another substance sometimes added was alum, the intention being to whiten the flour. Mustard was sometimes adulterated with wheat flour, clay and cayenne pepper, while pepper itself "was subject to great adulteration. Adulteration of vinegar seemed to be confined to water, sulphuric acid and burnt sugar, said Mr. Parker. Sugar confectionery was particularly subject to injurious adulteration by dangerous colours, the non-poisonous aniline colours not then having been discovered. Many of the ordinary paint pigments, many of them containing arsenic, were often used. Spiritous liquors and milk were, of course, frequently adulterated by the addition of water.