The Wanganui Herald. [ PUBLISHED DAILY .] FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1903. POISONED FOOD.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11562, 19 May 1905, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald. [ PUBLISHED DAILY .] FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1903. POISONED FOOD.

It is now a great many years ago since tho United States first gained famo as the "land of wooden^ nutmegs." Since that

time Uncle Sam's country has advanced by leaps and bounds in the art, of adulterating foodstuffs, till by now the table of -an American household, if it could speak, would probabiy N exclaim aloud at the sight of a pure article of food upon its boards. Scarcely anything seems sacred to the "faker" of food for human consumption, and according to a recent article in an .American magazine, the evil is assuming gigantic proportions. While tho American stomach has become so tanned a,nd hardened by long j>raclice in digestive assaults on, for instance, fruit jelly brought to the requisite dainty-look-ing colour with aniline dyes, it is otherwise with the recent arrival in the country, whose digestion has not been called on to deal with anything more difficult than the comparatively pure foods of effete old Europe. When the stranger takes, as he thinks, a morning cup of coffee, it very often happens that in the blissfulness of ignorance he is s really swallowing a decoction of chicory, mixed with the leather of old boots, gathered in the streets, and • ground to powder, the resulting mixture, together with any unconsidered microbes of -bubonic plague or cholera which it may have picked up, being brought to the requisite colour by a coal tar dye. After this we arc not surprised to be told that "foreigners often die when they come to I America from easing American-made foods." The wonder is that any of them survive. Thore is a fine large moral here for New Zealanders who buy coffee without looking at the label to see where it was ground and mixed. Going through the list of "faked" articles, as enumerated by the writer we are quoting, wo find that fruit is also being put before consumers in a form that, while attractive-looking after it has been touched up with flavourings and chemicals, would not bear inspection during the process of manufacture. It is an accepted axiom among up-to-date manufacturers that nothing should go to waste, aud that "it is tho by-products that make the profit." The fruit-canning establishments seem to Be especially strong on the utilisation of by-products and the prevention of waste, for we read that not only are the skins and cores of fruit collected, but such na'stiness as decomposed parts of first grade fruit, together with all spoiled fruit, are carefully saved, and the whole mixed into a pulp, from which is turned out "a marvellous variety of different brands of highly-coloured and temptinglooking bottle and canned foods." No one sees .these articles being made, however, oxoegt tho factory hands, who it must be presumed know too much to cat them, con-

eequently they sell readily enough, their artistic wrappers probably being as alluring to buyers as the "delicacies" themselves. Another moral here for those who buy American-canned "fancies." * Fortunately for us in New Zealand we do not get much American flour here, for if we did we should have the satisfaction (?) of knowing that our morning toast and afternoon 'tea biscuit wore composed in part of the dust of old bones, gathered in alleyways and fields; so at least the article under notice says. Bonedust is also used to swell the bulk of other than wheat flour, and it is therefore not a matter for wonderment to find, according to an estimate by "a responsible medical officer," that 65 per cent of the total infantile mortality of America is due to bad feeding, and to the poisons administered in impure foods. It is not only the composition of these "foods" that constitute a danger; the dyes used to give them a genuine appearance are doubly so. While their tempting appearance makes the American's mouth water, and their delicious taste causes him to smack his lips, his poor abused stomach protests in vain against being compelled to deal with such things as arsenic, wood alcohol, fusel oil, copper salt, turpentine, or petroleum,' all of which 'are used in one way or another to give flavour and colour. To such an extent has the demand for dyes and adulterants grown, that many large factories are exclusirely devoted to thoir production, and the extent to which they are used may be gauged from the fact that a leading manufacturer is reported to Have admitted to a Food Commissioner that if he -used only pure ingredients, and discarded adulterants, his profit per month would be .£2OOO less. • An idea of the large use of dye for colouring these poisonous concoctions may be obtained from recent experiments. In one case a small jar of so-called jelly was found to contain enough dye to colour 256 square inches of cloth, while another jar of the same toothsome stuff yielded enough acjd to eat a hole in a person's hand. Says the writer of the article: "A man who counterfeits a dollar is considered a crimi--nal, and at least would be excluded from good society. The man who counterfeits food is ranked among our millionaire social leaders. Law has been likened to a spider's web that catches the little things that are not heavy enough to fall through." It is to be hoped that the law of New Zealand 4 will not prove to be a spider's web as regards the importation of these awful Yankee mixtures, but that it will turn its attention to, and shut down promptly on, all proved cases of harmful adulteration of food, whether tho adulteration takes- place within 'or without the colony. Tho Health Department has taken very drastic action, as regards patent medicines — even the amendment just proposed by Sir Joseph Ward, the Minister in charge of the Department, is very different from the old take-no-notice policy. It might be well if the Department also turned. its attention to poisonous foods.