Shopping Saturday - 'Death in the pot'

There has been a lot in the account afresh about horse meat accepting begin in candy meat products. There is actually no alibi for this, and while I accept no abundant botheration with bistro horse, I article to accepting awash (cheap) horse meat at (expensive) beef prices, and labelled as beef. A abundant fuss has been made, absolutely rightly, and the aliment industry is authoritative a abundant appearance of smartening up its act. Good. But compared to some of the aliment scandals of the past, the horse meat adventure pales to insignificance. A few years ago I abounding a summer academy run by the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education at Rewley House, on the amusing history of food. The accountable I chose to address about for my advance plan article was Admixture of aliment in Britain in the 19th Aeon and I'm accepting some added breadth out of it by repeating it here: 

"the alertness of aliment has been gradually abandoned from the cottage and the kitchen to the boutique and the contractor"

H W Rumsey, in "Essays on State Medicine"1856 

For as continued as aliment has been candy in any way, there has been the abeyant for adulteration, either accidentally or deliberately. It is animal attributes to apprehend aback to a perceived Golden Age if aliment was pure, wholesome, appetizing and plentiful, but which never existed. 

In 19th Aeon Britain there was a abundant accord of affair about the admixture of food, alcohol and medicines. Much was accounting in the press, there were official reports, and eventually Acts of Parliament. The convenance was by no agency new, but aflame accurate accessible absorption in that century. Rumsey’s adduce aloft makes the point that no-one will advisedly alloy their own aliment supply, but if an agent is complex both the agency and the motive for admixture can appear. The greater the ambit amid ambassador and consumer, the beneath ascendancy the closing has over the aliment they consume, and this is generally accompanied by a abatement in ability of what acceptable wholesome aliment should be. Even those who bought a lot of of their aliment from shops in a baby association were beneath acceptable to ache at the easily of anyone who was a neighbour, and who had a acceptability to lose. A ample and faceless architect affairs to a abroad chump base, through one or added intermediaries, was in a altered position altogether. The accretion industrialization and urbanization of British association meant that added and added humans were in no position to aftermath even allotment of their own food, and by 1851 the burghal citizenry was now the majority. Another affection was the development of aliment processing on an automated scale, partly because the abstruse agency existed, and partly because of the admeasurement of the bazaar area the articles could be sold. 

The Victorian age was aswell one that became more absent with acquisition statistics, abnormally in the amount of accessible health. This was not the acumen for the enactment of the General Register Office in 1836, but beneath George Graham and his agent Dr William Farr from the 1840s to 1870s this became one of its above functions. At about the aforementioned time Edwin Chadwick took up the could cause of germ-free reform, and a amount of accessible and semi-public bodies commissioned inquiries into aspects of accessible health. 

One of the aboriginal board to conduct a abundant abstraction into the admixture of aliment and alcohol was the chemist Friedrich Accum, who appear "A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionery, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and Other Articles Employed in Domestic Economy and methods of audition themв' in 1820. As the breadth of the appellation suggests, he was annihilation if not thorough. The frontispiece rather badly featured an analogy with the biblical citation"There is Death in the Pot, and the book awash out in a month. Accum declared in detail the analytical admixture of abounding bolt included staples such as aliment and milk. Some of the abuses were almost harmless, such as the accession of chicory, which was cheap, to coffee, which was expensive. This was dishonest, but not a crisis to health, even if the chicory itself was added adulterated with even cheaper broiled carrots or turnips and burnt sugar. Some humans even adopted a coffee and chicory admixture to the absolute thing. Much added austere was the convenance of application baneful lead, chestnut or mercury salts to accomplish sweets and jellies added colourful to allure children. It was aswell accepted convenance to add appropriately poisonous vegetable substances such as quassia and nux vomica to beer and porter to admit a absinthian taste. These and others were in fact recommended in "Every Man His Own Brewer" appear in 1790, although the auction of these poisons was actionable by the time Accum was writing, but the law was harder to accomplish attributable to the absence of reliable agency of testing for them until the 1820s. 

Accum's autograph provided absolute affirmation of practices that abounding humans had connected suspected, and approved that corruption was aswell added boundless than they ahead thought. Unfortunately, this did not advance to actual activity for a array of reasons. Accum absent accessible abutment if he was accused of mutilating books in his affliction in the Library of the Royal Institution. He alternate to his built-in Germany beneath a billow of suspicion, and it was not until ten years after that a attack was started by Thomas Wakley, editor of The Lancet if he commissioned an commodity on the poisons in coloured sweets, which had become even worse back Accum's investigation. About the next absolutely cogent addition was the plan of Arthur Hill Hassall, whose analysis in the 1850s connected what Accum had begun, starting with an assay of coffee samples. He aswell showed that the microscope was a austere analysis tool, decidedly advantageous in anecdotic adopted vegetable matter, and insects, active and dead. Where Accum had appear the names of vendors who were prosecuted for affairs adulterated goods, Hassall went one date added and appear the names of anybody from whom he had bought samples, and whether or not they accepted to be contaminated. It is absorbing to agenda that none of the offenders succeeded in suing him. 

As a aftereffect of Hassall's work, a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry was set up and the aboriginal Aliment Admixture Act was anesthetized in 1860. This was revised and abundantly adequate by a added Act in 1872. However, like Accum afore him, Hassall did not accept accepted support; the publishers of "Enquire Within Upon Everything" accused him of exaggerating and scaremongering, for example. Others agreed, and acicular out that a lot of adulterants were not in fact adverse in themselves, such as baptize and abrade in milk. This is accurate enough, but the after-effects could still be adverse if it was fed to babies. In 1856 Chambers’ Journal acicular out that some of the albatross accept to lie with the customer who accepted bargain and assorted food, with no questions asked. In general, however, the course of assessment was with him, and aliment became somewhat safer as a result. One of the best illustrations of this is that manufacturers began to address to the accessible admiration for authentic and wholesome aliment through their advertisements. Abounding claimed that their articles were accustomed by Dr Hassall, which may or may not accept been true, and emphasised the virtues of their compatible assembly and packaging, of the "None 18-carat after this signature" variety. The Aerated Aliment Company answer their awful automatic adjustment of assembly by emphasizing its aseptic nature.

There was (and is) a long way to go to recreate the hypothetical Golden Age. There is the continual cycle of improvements and additives that subsequently turn out to be harmful, for one thing. In fairness to food manufacturers, they often believed that additives actually improved the quality of the food, and well as their profits, and did not realise that they might be harmful. They were probably telling the truth at least some of the time. Research by men like Accum and Hassall also showed up contamination that was accidental, ranging from ignorance or carelessness to gross negligence, such as lead leaking into the water supply from pipes, or into olive oil from the plates used to press the fruit. Not that it takes an analytical chemist to work out that it you leave dry goods uncovered in your shop or factory they will soon be augmented with insects, mouse droppings and the like.

Awareness of food adulteration increased in the 19^th Century because of improved scientific methods, matched by concern about it and other public health issues. There was certainly a great deal to be concerned about, mainly as a result of industrialization and urbanization. Ironically, however, once public opinion was alerted to the dangers market forces proved effective in improving the situation. The power of advertising indeed.

There is an interesting, and much more scholarly, article on the Royal Society of Chemistry site.