Tuesday, July 1, 2025

FOOD CHEATS AND THE 1800S: Be very afraid! by Marisa Masterson

https://www.docsteach.org/activities/printactivity/progressive-era-food-regulation


Lately, food dyes and chemicals in food are often in the news. I even heard someone talk about returning to the purity of the foods from bygone eras. Well, some of what folks ate was not all that pure! 
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/389842911467779358/

  Take milk, for instance. Healthy milk. In the 1800s, sellers played an awful trick on consumers. Many watered down the milk. They added chalk to restore the white appearance. Formaldehyde, what was used in embalming, went into it to prevent spoiling. Fresh did not describe what they presented to the public. Sadly, this led to infant deaths. One more reason infant mortality was so high at that time. 
https://beavertrust.org/beaver-basics/beaver-history/

  How about sweet vanilla? What could be done to vanilla, right? Well, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a handy cheat was used to replace this. Castoreum, which tastes similar to the flavoring, was highly sought after. Its source? The anal secretions of a beaver! People knew where it came from and wanted it anyhow because of the cheaper cost compared to vanilla. 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pure-Food-and-Drug-Act

  Did the flour go sour? Add ammonium carbonate so the buyer believes it is freshly milled. 
Speaking of flour, white flour was more costly than the brown multi-grain variety. To make white bread, some bakers added chalk. To increase the weight of a loaf, they added pipe clay. 
  So, if those foods could be tainted, how about simply eating candy? No, that was a risk. Lead was used to color it. If the candy was green, it probably contained arsenic. 
  Little wonder the federal government finally stepped in to create the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Before that, states were supposed to supervise what was consumed.
  





















Wow! I am beginning to see how blessed my poor but healthy ancestors were to live on a farm and raise their own milk, meat, and vegetables. Perhaps we have slipped backward with our junk foods and fast food today.



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