HEALTH NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1929, Page 28 (Supplement)

HEALTH NOTES

SOFT DRINKS. CORDIALS AND BEVERAGES. (Department of Health.) The principal object of this article is to draw attention to and offer a guide in purchasing the numerous beverages offered to the public either as “soft drinks” ready for consumption, or in a form requiring dilution. With the coming of the warmer weather there will be no doubt the usual offering of a wide variety of names, attractive labels, and multi-coloured mixtures. Beverages may be obtained in three forms: (a) Cordials prepared for dilution with water; (b) carbonated drinks bottled ready for consumption; (c) “concentrated” liquids and “crystals'” sold to be made up in the home with sugar and water to make cordials ready for dilution as required. Each of these three general classes is in turn subvided, and the varieties must be labelled -according to the kind of materials used in their manufacture. Cordials may be labelled either “pure fruit,” “flavoured” or “artificial.” It will be obvious that there is nothing superior to a pure fruit cordial. There is ample evidence of the health-giving value of fruit juices. The regulations require that only sugar water and preservative may be added to fruit juices if they are sold as pure fruit cordials or syrups. “Flavoured” cordials are usually made from essences derived from fruits, but it is not diffic-dt to imagine that in making essences either from fruit skins or juices or both skins and juices, there must be an absence of that certain yet indefinable “life” quality that exists in the juice before it has passed through the various processes of manufacture. Essences are so much unlike original juices that it is necessary to permit the addition of artificial colour in order to make a presentable looking, article. The third phase is the “artificial cordial.” Although it cannot be shown conclusively that it has harmful effects there is no useful evidence that can be assembled in its defence. To place before children such drinks as, say, artificial raspberry cordial is like sitting the children in a draught between an open door and window and asking them to imagine they are having a motor drive. CARBONATED DRINKS. To pass now to the drinks bottled ready for immediate use. These may

be made in the same degrees as cordials, i.e. “pure,” “flavoured,” “artificial,” but of course are diluted to a greater degree with watei- for ready use. None of the pure grade, that is, drinks made direct from the fruit have been observed on sale. An example, would be a lemon squeezed, the juice sweetened and water-. ed,and then bottled. The great propor-. tion of these drinks will be found to be labelled “flavoured.” They are made from essences, and these essences are the product of only the fruit skins in the ease of citrus fruits such as lemon, lime and orange. There is no use of juice. Consequently citric acid or tartaric acid must be used in order to give the drink the neccisseary acidity in its flavour. Colour i<s also ad led of the sake of appearance. However, the drinks in this class make quite presentable and wholesome beverages assisted by the effervescence of the carbonated water with which they are made, but owing to the forced flavour and excessive sweetness in many cases, their thirst-quenching properties are often nullified. Once again reference must be made to artificial beverages in this class. I hey have nothing to commend them. CONCENTRATED ESSENCES. Come now to the small medicine bottles filled with so-called “ebneentrated” essences for making beverages in the home. These are simply a mixture of citric or tartaric acid, colouring matter, and flavouring essence to which you add your own sugar and water. Sometimes a gummy substance is used in order to hold the ingredients together or perhaps to make the mixture look thicker in support of its claim to be concentrated. If the flavouring essence ia claimed to be a genuine fruit derivative the mixture may be described as. for making flavoured drinks, but if the flavouring is an artificial” must appear on the label for the mixture. Summed up, and any cordial or beverage sold under the head pure fruit” has everything to commend it; if described as “flavoured” although the flavouring agent once may have been in the fruit its arrival at the stage for use in the mixture has been by I deviou* paths in traversing which many of its pristine qualities may have been destroyed so much so that in many cases it would be difficult to prove that it had ever seen fruit. Finally, in the “artificial” class any such beverage with a fruit name should not be assumed to have any of the virtues associated with fruit, or that it is of any greater value than drink of sweetened water.