Suzanne's CORNER

Very recently I stumbled across a PBS program and subsequently was so interested in the subject that You-Tube was the next place to go to check out several videos, multiple times. This is such a historic and actually on-going subject, my thought was to introduce you to Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize Winner and New York Times bestselling author of “The Poison Squad” by reviewing her video and urging you to pick up a copy of her book. She’s incredibly researched and knowledgeable on food preservation, sanitation and regulations as they have made their way through the past hundred plus years. This column is based upon Deborah Blum’s lecture. All I can say is WOW and BUCKLE-UP!

Grab that cup of fresh aroma’d black coffee, stir in a tablespoon of sweet white cream add a little touch of sugar, put your feet up and get ready to read. This one is going to make you think and hopefully not get sick or be totally grossed out…here we go!!

Have you ever given it a second thought about what you are putting in your mouth? We pretty much take it for granted that we can eat whatever, like meat, candy or drink a coke and not DIE! But, it wasn’t always that way. In the late 1800’s a doctor, Dr. Harvey Wiley, became obsessed with what the general public was ingesting and spent his entire life trying to get regulations passed to protect the population from literally dying. He wanted to know what chemicals were being added into food and if you ate enough…would it kill you? There were no regulations whatsoever and basically any food manufacturer or packager could do whatever they wanted to sell more product. Obviously, the longer the food lasted, the more profit the seller could make. Consequently, the desired choice for the preservation of food was to add either arsenic or formaldehyde to a product depending on what food group you were selling or shipping.

In about 1874, as a request, one of his first chemistry experiments was to test honey and maple syrup. The Doctor gathered samples of honey, maple syrup and jam from all over the US and found that 90% of the samples were FAKE. They were made from corn syrup and dyed to the appropriate color. In the case of honey, the manufacturers had a mold to make a honey comb “look-alike” that was crumbled and put into the jars. The consumer didn’t know any different as that was the taste and packaged look they knew. Even today, honey might be thinned with a rice syrup, corn syrup or beet syrup. However, today, you can read a label! Not only regulations but informative labels weren’t very prevalent in the olden days!

One of the most serious problems was with milk. Initially the milk vendors ladled milk from large barrels to the general public. Since there was no refrigeration, this caused lots of deaths as it would easily rot and milk became known as “poison milk”. The vendors would thin milk with water which turned the milk to a blue color. As the color was not acceptable, they added chalk, plaster of Paris dust (a mixture of lime, sand or cement) or gelatin to bring the color back. Next, they had to figure out a way to make a bottle of milk look fresh with cream floating to the top. The dairy industry, aside from selling the milk, was trying to use every part of the cow and get the public to eat brain sandwiches. People said “NO THANK YOU” to brain sandwiches, so the dairy men began grinding up the calf brains and put them on top of the milk making it look like cream…same color…offwhite! Only one problem arose… when the supposed cream was put into coffee, the brains would cook and the coffee would have lumps floating in it!

As people moved from the farms, with fresh food and milk, into the cities, food manufacturers had to figure out how to get products shipped to the masses. Trains moved people, so why not products. The dairy industry tried to solve delivering fresh milk since drinking old, rotten milk would make you sick if not kill you and still no refrigeration. There was no law prohibiting putting anything into anything so milk started getting a dose of formaldehyde. The reasoning was, formaldehyde embalming during the Civil War, was good for keeping bodies from rotting, so why not do the same with milk or meat! And, the more they added, the longer the milk lasted! They could make milk last 10 days on the counter with no refrigeration. UGH!!

In 1902, Dr Wiley couldn’t get the government to pay attention or pass any regulations so he took it into his own hands and scouted up a bunch of volunteers from all over the Unit ed States. The government did actually give him $5,000 to test additives on humans so he advertised for a group of people saying he would feed them 3 meals a day for months if they would be willing to participate. Thousands of volunteers raised their hands. He selected young healthy men who seemed to be in great physical shape and told them they had to eat 3 meals a day, only what they were served, no snacks, no beer or drinks for a period of time to be determined.

The first tested substance on the volunteers was borax. Just like you can buy today, 20 Mule Team Borax. It was used as a food preservative in butter, milk and meat. The guys got a capsule of BORAX daily. Beyond the daily poison pill, they were also being fed all types of food that contained preservatives. The daily meals were poisoning the young men and proving the doctor’s theory that the food that was being fed to the general public was killing the population. This experiment of volunteers was named by The Washington Post, “The Poison Squad”… although the doctor called it “hygienic table trials”! And, the outcome of the trials turned into NOTHING, as the government still wasn’t concerned with food regulations.

The doctor continued to write reports and ask the government to get behind him with regulations. Big food companies were moving into the cities and we were still the “Wild West” in our food exploration. Arsenic and formaldehyde continued to be the go-to for color and preservation…as well as copper sulfate, used for pickling.Arsenic was a wonderful green dye used in many products especially colored candies. The more arsenic, the prettier green color. The more candy, the more children died. Lead was used as a red and yellow color again for colored candies. When they wanted to make chocolate candy shiny, they added arsenic glaze to the outside. It was also found in wall paper, cake decorations and fabric…and we all got sicker! And, still nothing from the regulators in the US!

The worse of all was the general public didn’t know anything was going on because nobody told them anything….other than keep eating and drinking! And they did, drink lots of coffee since cans of ground coffee were hitting the market. As coffee was tested, most times it was sawdust with lead-black for color and charred bones would sometimes be found in the cans. Fake coffee beans were commonly made with dirt and wax or clay. One scientist noted that the expression of “a muddy cup of coffee” was probably because they were drinking dirt!

And, as we look at whiskey, it was no better. Depending on what you wanted, rye or bourbon or whatever, whiskey was synthesized ethanol made with dye. The more dye, the darker more aged alcohol you were buying! A flavor, or essence of a flavor was added like rye or bourbon; and to make it look like real booze, a soapy mixture was added so it would cling to the glass, like the real stuff.

When flour was tested it was found to have ground-up gypsum or white stone in the mixture. When cough syrup was tested it was found that the sweetener was done with antifreeze, and kids died. All things added were to make the original product go further and increase the profits for the manufacturers. Who cared about the public?? Obviously, only one doctor.

The big companies continued to pour into the cities and food maintained it’s disgusting state. During President Roosevelt’s time there was a huge embalmed beef scandal. Even the President exclaimed, “he would rather eat his hat than eat meat!” The meat industry was centered in Chicago in the packing houses. They utilized an assembly line approach to turn out thousands of pounds daily and had no inspections or quality control whatsoever. There was a butcher’s strike which was an appropriate time to explore the ways of the packing houses. What they found was horrific and was put into a report sent back to the president.

Roosevelt read the report and refused to believe it. It talked about rats being ground up into the food, the poison for the rats going into the food, rotting meat where mold would be scraped off and then ground up, people parts ground in, as well as formaldehyde being put on as a topper. He was so disgusted he sent his own people to investigate.

When they returned, they said it was true, but was actually worse than that. Roosevelt asked Congress to pass legislation, actually he THREATENED Congress…if they didn’t pass meat legislation, he would release the report. They didn’t and HE DID. Consequently, Europe cancelled the meat contracts with the US and Congress finally got off their rear ends and passed some laws. (Sounds kinda familiar in 2020)

The FDA was formed in 1906 and is still actively trying to protect the public. They passed a law called the Delaney Clause to regulate color dyes and had 500 dye colors analyzed. Of the 500 only 20 were found to be acceptable, which we still have today. But, thankfully the deadly ones, like Red Dye No. 2, have been pulled and outlawed.

Today things really are a little better. Our government continues to be under-funded for inspectors so we don’t test everything. However, arsenic and formaldehyde are no longer used today and our labeling system is without a doubt much better, although still needs improvement. Sometimes we have good laws, but they don’t always get followed.

Sometimes we have hurtful poisons that were regulated from one product but still used in another one. For example, titanium dioxide is no longer used in food but still used in cosmetics. Ladies, read the label and DON’T USE IT! Lipsticks made in China, the cheap ones on the displays, usually contain toxic metals. Pay a little more and don’t poison yourself! Also, toothpaste from China has been a problem as they manufactured it with ethylene glycol. A killer of thousands! Remember China doesn’t have much in the way of quality control, hygiene or regulations so please be weary of Chinese products, whether meat, cosmetics, toys or whatever. They may be cheaper but, I for one have opened my eyes with this research and will be much more cautious on going…not to mention my garden will be getting much bigger with fresh food this year. No more hidden germs on lettuce for me!

We all owe a debt of gratitude to those from the original “Poison Squad” and Dr. Harvey Wiley, who gambled with their lives to eventually make us all safer with food regulations!