No Physic With Our Food
This is rathera dangerous proposition, put forth by the manufacturera of some of the patented or proprietary articles of foocf, tht.t their producís poBsess a superior wholesomeness because they contain a drug of some particular medicinal property. Phosphates, alum, lime, arsenic, calomel, etc, have their places as specifica for different diseases, and are invaluable medical remedies, each in its place. But they are not cure-alls. The physician who should prescribe either calomel, or strychnine, or rhubarb three times a day to man, woman and child, sick or well, because either of such drugs is a well known remedy for some certain disease, would receive but little honor from the fraternity and less practice from the community. No one will controvert this statement ; yet we find manufacturera of baking powdera claiming superior hygienic virtue for their productions and urging their continuous use because they are alleged to carry the phosphate used in making them (a cheap substitute for cream of tartar, procured from the bones of dead animáis) into the food, although well aware, as they must be, of the fact that with the constant use of such article this drug must pass into our systems daily, no matter what may be our physical conditions or requirements, or whether or not we may be suffering from some ailment wherein the use of such drug would be positively detrimental. Both alum and phospbates are useful medicament8 in certain diseases; but they should no more be taken indiscriminately day after day and without the prescription of a physician, than arsenic, aconite or calomel ; indeed, there are conditions of the system, particularly with women, when the prudent physician would be loath to permit the use of lime phosphates even as a medicine. The fallacy of this claim of the manufacturera of phosphatic baking powders will be apparent to all when the fact, well known to physicians.isstated, that in average health and with ordinary food the body gets more phosphates than are required or can be assimilated, as is evidenced by the fa' t that they are constantly being expelled in the excretions, both solid and liquid ; likewise the statement that it is necessary to add phosphates to the baking powder to restore to the flour those which have been lost in the milling, for it is true that fine flour as at present made actually contains a larger percentage of phosphates than the grain of wheat sel f. The object of baking powders is not to provide the body with a medicine, bnt simply to vesiculate or make light the mixture of flour, so as to render it wlii'n baked easy of mastication and perfectly digestible. Tlie most celebrated experts in the business have worked for the perfection of an article that should do tliis mechanically, adding to or taking from the flour nothing, nor in any way effect ing a change in its properties or constituents. When this has been done the perfect leavening agent has been discovered. The manufacturera of the Royal Baking Powder have succeeded in this so far as to make a leavening agent and vesiculatea and raises the loaf most perfectly, and without changing the properties of the flour, while the residuum from it has been reduced to a minimum. The acid employed, however, to produce this result is not phosphatic, but the acid of highly refined cream of tartar, which, the health authorities agree, renders that powder perfectly pure and more reliable and healthful than any other. The recent official tests show, on the other hand, that the best the phosphatic baking powder makers can do is to produce an article that is one-third or more residuum or impurity. We want our food pure ; espocially do we not wish to take alnm, lime aud phosphates with it at the dictum of manufacturera who may flnd it cheaper to claim a virtuefor the impuritiesthan to remove them.
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Ann Arbor Register