ARTIFICIAL FOODS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16964, 28 March 1917, Page 7

ARTIFICIAL FOODS

% Cilam.es Cooper, Editor of the Epicure, iji Chambers's Journal. Economical considerations, induced by the present high cost of living, have lately directed increased attention to various artificial preparations, designed to serve as substitutes for the more costly food articles to which we have been accustomed, with the result that in at least one instance tardy justice has been done to an artificial prot.uct that had long been regarded with suspicion. I" oods made, or invented, by the chemist come under two denominations, the distinction between which, all-important as it is, is perhaps very imperfectly appreciated by the general public. There is, first, the imitation food which has nothing but some particular trait in common with the article it parodies, differing from it essentially in chemical constitution and food value. Substitutes of this character may have a value of their own commercially and in domestic economy; often they are produced for fraudulent purposes only; or, again, may be merely scientific diversions of chemical experimentalists. Altogether different is the synthetic food. Synthesis is the reversing of analysis. Analysis is the resolving of a compound body into its elements; synthesis I is the combining of elements into a comi pound. All our foods are made up of various constituents, combined and developed as the results of animal and vegei table growth, and "the chemist, having analysed these and ascertained their constituents, has been able to recombine cnern, and, putting them through processes somewhat analogous to Nature, has produced laboratory-made articles which conform exactly by analysis and in food value to the original models set by Nature herself. What the food-chemist has done in this direction is sufficiently wonderful, although his powers are by no means illimitable. He is able to make a great many things; but meat and starch he cannot make. The analysis of starch and • of meatalbumen is easy enough, but their synthesis has hitherto baffled all the men of science. In the days before the war German chemists did not despair of ultimate success • latterly their activities have been diverted into other channels. Where starch and albumen occur in synthetic food, therefore, they are the natural products. Given a laboratory equipped with 70 elements, plus starch and albumen, the chemist can make up most of the foods on our ordinary bill-of-fare. Not that the majority of such experiments, have any domestic or commercial significance, their production -involving no economy of means. While they are often of great interest to the student, they offer no money-making or money-saving possibilities to the manufacturer or householder. I have heard of a laboratory-made dish of mashed potatoes, which in appearance and flavour would have imposed upon a Parmentier; but the 'potato itself would be very much cheaper than it synthetic substitute. Some there are among synthetic foods winch have proved of immense commercial and domestic importance. Of these margarine may be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of food science. By certain processes, known only to Nature, the. fatty tisues of the cow are transformed into milk; the milk is drawn from the animal; the fat-globules are separated, compressed, and make their appearance as butter. The chemist, by a scientific short cut, takes the fat direct from the tissues of the animal, and, in margarine, produces an article so exact to butter in chemical composition and nutritive value, and- so closely resembling it in taste and appearance, as to be indistinguishable to the eye or the ordinary palate. The very fldelity of the "resemblance was the undoing of margarine in the first instance. Its cost of production being about one-fourth of that of butter, the temptation to the dishonest trader to foist the cheap article upon his customer in place of the more expensive one proved irresistible. Its retail sale has, in the past, been attended with more dishonest practices than probably that of any other single article of consumption. It was' made the subject of special legislation both' in Britain and America, and found constant employment for an army of vigilant food-illspectors and public analysts. The result was the creation of a prejudice that for a long time barred margarine from domestic use, although it was enormously used in the production of shop 'goods and factory-made products. Latterly there has been a very welcome change in the public attitude. Margarine is now advertised and sold under its proper designation, and is bought and used on its merits. The employment of a large proportion of nutbutter in place of animal fat reduces the cost of manufacture, and makes the article a profitable one for the seller, while it supplies the user with a cheap and perfectly wholesome and nutritious article of diet. That remarkable vegetable, the soya bean, has been successfully employed in the production of synthetic milk, which can be retailed at about half the present price of ordinary milk, to which it conforms exactly in appearance and analysis, •with no very marked difference in flavour. This subtlety of flavour, which is one of Nature's own secrets, is one of the things which often evade the art of the food chemist. On the other hand, he can frequently claim an advantage over Nature in the greater reliability of. his products. Cow's milk, for instance, is apt to vary in quality, even when taken from the same cow, from day to day. The synthetic product, being made to' a standard prescription, never varies. . A milk-like emulsion prepared from sanatogen is an example of an imitation, as distinguished from a synthetic food. It- is like milk in appearance; but while it has a value of its own as a nutritions article, it differs essentially from milk in its constitution, and cannot be employed to replace it. Glucose is another synthetic article which, although not sold in the grocers' shops in place of sugar, is extensively employed in manufactures. Nature, by r some occult system of her own, produces sugar in many plants, notably in the sugarcane. Physiologists discovered that sugar taken into the stomach is converted into glucose by the digestive acids before the system can assimilate it. The chemist,' finding that the same article, glucose, can be produced by boiling starch in a weak solution of sulphuric acid, the acid being subsequently neutralised by lime, the result has been the creation of an industry the magnitude of which it is hardly possible to estimate. More than a quarter of a century ago it is said that Germany alone had £0 factories at work, turning out 30,000 tons of starch-sugar annually. Glucose is sanctioned by the law, and, being practically identical with cane sugar, no objection can be raised to its use. It crystallises less readily than cane sugar, and golden "syrup prepared from it is more favoured by buyers from its presenting a brilliant, transparent appearance; and jams in which it is used keep soft for a long time. It must be borne in mind that, as glucose is to some extent a pre-digested food, it is absorbed more readily than cane sugar, and may be apt to overload the system more easily. It also undergoes fermentation more readily. The manufacture is nowadays conducted with great care; otherwise the elimination of sulphurous acid has at times been far from complete, and a catastrophe happened some years ago through the customers of a northern brewery being poisoned wholesale bv the arsenical contamination of the sjlncose employed in place of malt. The alarm that this created and the precautions instituted are the best guarantees against the recurrence of such a danger. While glucose is a perfectly permissible substitute for sugar, the same cannot be said for its other rival, saccharin, which is an imitation pure and simple. Its discovery was one of the romances of the laboratory. Over 30 years ago Dr Ira Rem sen, afterwards president of the John Hopkins University, entrusted a student, who was working for his doctor's degree, with the preparation of a new derivative of toluene. Happening to taste the product, the student —now Dr C. Fahlberg— was amazed <it its extraordinary sweetness, which is estimated at 555 times that of cane Impressed with the commercial possibilities of the discovery, Dr Fahlberg threw up his work at the university and secured for himself all the leeal rights of the discovery. Its results

have been colossal in their With no food value whatever, has, perhaps, a legitimate sphere of utility as a sweetening agent for diabeticpatients; but its illegitimate commercial, •• employment is on an immeasurably greater scale, and its effect in cheapening" pro- -; duction has led to its extensive use ,in v. about 30 manufactures, such as childretfsil sweetmeats, jams, jellies, marmalades}-^-' 1 canned goods, and various drinks. Coal-,-!-, tar, of which saccharin is a derivative, > does not commend itself to one" as a sirable food article, and it is not surpris-r'i ing to hear that a consensus of professional*;'' opinion has declared the habitual use of " saccharin in the dietary to be fraught A" withl the gravest danger to health. Iv ; -' retards the digestive transformation of.tj foods to the weakening of muscular energy. It is diuretic, and its passage through. 1 the kidneys is liable to be attended ■with serious consequences, especially to those';-, who have any tendency to disea£6 of those organs. In America, and in all European . countries save our own, its use is pro- .' hibited, or allowed only under most strin- : gent regulations. As a great deal of, may go into very small compass, it affords excellent opportunities for indulgence -in 7.-'-the good Old World diversion of smuggling, to "which, and to its extended usei'i*. it is to be feared that the present high.--; price of sugar may offer very great '! temptations.

The synthetic production of alleged fruit'f'£ essences is a ilourisliing business, the secrete of which would be very interating,':!! if told, as illustrating what may be doneS with apparently unpromising material. once heard a learned professor describe with much complacency how ho made delectable pineapple flavouring upon he particularly prided himself. The pro- : cesses were lengthy and painstaking, and''? included the decomposing in a chalk mix-'-; ture of very rotten cheese and very sour I milk, and distilling the product -with oil. "' of vitriol.

About synthetic wines there might b© -1 found material for a small volume. production has furnished diversion tos&^ : great many experimentalists in chemistry:# and a handsome living to a great many pt.;-:, ploiters of the public. The late Mattieti-K Williams told of a Birmingham chemist of V his acquaintance who succeeded in pro-,S really excellent claret, might have passed muster in every respect '?> save colour, which he could obtain onlyt : by the use of aniline dye. Being a man • • burdened with a conscience, he shrank ' from that, and so, as Mr Williams said, another industry was lost to Birmingham:"! Every now and then we read in papers sensational stories of the coming usurpation of the kitchen by the labfciaN tory, and of the meals of the future which the chemist will supply concentrated into ;?• the dimensions of a lozenge. These viti-'S"' cinations are "but the babble of sible frivolity. We have a few synthetic'•> foods of outstanding merit, such as those. ; referred to in this article, which done, and are doing, important w;ork in snpplemeting and cheapening our ordinary food supplies, and it is probable that;! the number of these may be increased <as ■- time goes on.; but the majority of these" laboratory discoveries, often upon wMi'.e the chemist was looking for t something else, may have a scientific m- "■ terest without any practical public significance. V 1