Читать книгу Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living - Henry T. Finck - Страница 10
WHY THE CANDY WAS NOT EATEN.
ОглавлениеMiss Alice Lakey, chairman of the food investigating committee of the Food Consumers' League, made a collection, as the New York "Sun" reported, of squares of flannel, a dozen of them, in brilliant hues of green, red, pink, and other colors—all colored with the coal tar dyes that came out of eatables and drinkables, she explained, adding: "It's a wonder that our insides are not dyed all the colors of the rainbow.
"One of the meanest forms of adulteration I know," she further remarked, "is the blackberry brandy, because that is bought for invalids, aged and delicate persons, who hope to get a little strength and appetite from it. Out of 600 samples examined, 460 contained no trace of blackberries. They were made of crude spirits colored with coal tar dyes.
"Did you ever hear the story," she continued, "of the kind-hearted New York woman who invited a company of Italian girls who worked in a candy factory to a Christmas party? She had an entertainment and Christmas tree for them, and among other things was a box of fine chocolate creams for each one. When they went away every child left her box of candy on the chair behind her.
"'Why, aren't you going to take your chocolates?' said the surprised hostess.
"'Oh, no,' they said in chorus; 'we make those!'"
That tells the whole story. The slaughter of the innocents and the ruining of health of children by means of adulterated and poisoned candies was for decades a national crime that would have justified thousands of lynchings, if anything ever does justify such summary meting out of punishment.
Dr. Shepard, State chemist of South Dakota, framed a series of menus, on the plan of those published by the women's magazines, to assist housewives in catering for families. Here are three, which show how any family in the United States might have reasonably taken forty doses of chemical preservatives and coal tar dyes in one day:
