Figments

Artificial colouring matters are added to foods, both to intentionally deceive and also merely to make different substances, such as preserved green vegetables, candies, or confections, appear more attractive to the eye.

Formerly highly injurious copper or zinc salts were much used to colour canned peas and beans, and not infrequently they were found in poisonous quantities, but the green plant pigment chlorophyll is so much cheaper, and is so abundant and harmless, that it has superseded them almost entirely since its introduction for this purpose in 1877.

Ultramarine is much used to colour sirups; safranin, eosin, fuch-sin, anilin violet, and many other anilins are employed in the manufacture of candies, as is also cochineal.

The pigments most in vogue to colour butter and cream are turmeric, saffron, an orange pigment from the stigmas of a flower, sul-phonated anilin yellow, and annotto, a yellow pigment derived from the fruit of a South American tree. Annotto as used by dairymen to colour milk and cream is not harmful. To detect it, add a tea-spoonful of baking soda to a quart of the milk, and immerse in it a strip of unglazed paper. In a few hours the latter becomes orange-coloured if annotto is present (Leffmann).

Salicylic Acid

The French Commission of Public Hygiene made an exhaustive investigation of the subject of adulteration of bottled beer, cider, milk, grape juice, and other aliments with salicylic acid, which is mainly added to prevent decomposition. They reported that its daily use in the quantities employed for preservation is not harmful to healthy persons, but if renal or hepatic disease exists it may become so, for under these conditions it is not promptly eliminated. Used in any considerable quantity, it in time produces anaemia, as it does in rheumatism.

Wiley found salicylic acid in seven out of ten samples of canned tomatoes bought in markets. Formic aldehyde is extensively employed as a preservative of milk and other foods.

Vaseline is sometimes used to adulterate butter for making pastry and cakes. It does not become rancid, and is therefore difficult of detection. Fortunately, it is not especially harmful.

National Bureau Of Medicines And Foods

Efforts to establish a National Bureau of Medicines and Foods, designed especially to prevent adulteration and misrepresentation, are being made (1904) by the American Medical and the American Pharmaceutical Associations, and it is to be hoped that Congressional sanction of the plan may soon be obtained. If such a Bureau were established as a part of a broader Department of Public Hygiene, with representation in the Cabinet, it would contribute towards advancing this country in matters sanitary and hygienic to the standards of some of the continental countries which, in these respects, are at present far in the lead.

The importation of adulterated foods from foreign countries is well guarded against by existing customs regulations, but the various State laws against such adulteration are in great need of uniform codification, which can only be properly secured by national control. For example, adulterations and imitations of butter, which are prohibited in one State, may be legally sold in another, and the public suffers from lack of protection against food frauds.