Читать книгу Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living - Henry T. Finck - Страница 18

Table of Contents

STARTLING as are the facts in the foregoing chapter, they do not tell the whole story. We have seen that the non-condimental chemical preservatives used by the food poisoners are highly objectionable on two grounds: (1) because they are usually injurious and often deadly; and (2) because they enable unscrupulous persons to use the filthiest, rottenest material and so doctor it as to deceive the consumer into believing it to be wholesome food, whereas it may, and often does, result in ptomaine poisoning.

But there is a third indictment against the food sophisticators. The chemicals they use, not only make the food they manipulate dangerous to eat, but they also diminish and often completely destroy its Flavor.

This destruction of the food Flavors may seem to those who have given no special attention to this matter a thing to be regretted, indeed, but not an actual crime. That it is a real crime, because it helps to undermine the consumers' health, I shall demonstrate in this chapter. It is necessary to know the facts now to be set forth in order to realize the full significance of the deplorable state of affairs to be revealed in the next chapter, entitled Our Denatured Foods. That chapter will continue the subject of Ungastronomic America, wherefore Chapter II may be regarded as an Intermezzo—but a most important one, for it contains truths that are of vital importance to everybody. Indeed, it is chiefly for the sake of impressing these truths on as many intelligent persons as possible that I am writing this book.