![]() I gave the example of arsenic, which was a green food dye also used to make the shellac that glosses up chocolate. It's baffling, because you are in this period where food makers are knowingly using very bad things. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. The family found worms wiggling in it.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Poison Squad Subtitle One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Author Deborah Blum At one point, there was a case in Indiana in which it was pond water. Dairymen seeking to stretch their profits would thin it with water – and not always clean water. I took a close look at milk, because it's a great example of just how bad things could get. So what might people in 1900 have found in their milk, or their coffee, or their spices? I was actually shocked to discover it was horrifyingly fake, fraudulent and tainted by any and all chemicals felt like putting in it. This is the rise of industrialized America in the late 19th century, so most people were eating manufactured, grocery store-bought food. To be fair, there were people who lived on the farm and ate wonderful produce from their gardens, but most people were in this period of migration to the cities. You start the book by noting that we have this conception of the food our ancestors ate as being pure and authentic, straight from the farm. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and contains some Web-only expanded answers. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Blum about her new book and Wiley, a formidable pioneer of food-safety regulations. Nevertheless, we still have debates today over what is safe for us to eat. It was a long battle, but one that did make things better. But Wiley and his small band of chemists began methodically testing suspected harmful additives and revealing the effects of these dangerous compounds to the government and public. Wiley was an indefatigable activist for food safety regulations during a time when the food industry was organizing and adding substances to food without any oversight, using its might to put profits before people. Department of Agriculture in 1883, conducted a rather grisly experiment on human volunteers to help make food safer for consumers - and his work still echoes on today. Harvey Washington Wiley, named chief chemist of the U.S. The American food industry was once a wild and dangerous place for the consumer.ĭeborah Blum's new book, The Poison Squad, is a true story about how Dr. Borax - the stuff used to kill ants! - used as a common food preservative. Harvey Washington Wiley was instrumental in bringing about regulations to boost sanitation and decrease food adulteration.
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