Page:Foods and their adulteration; origin, manufacture, and composition of food products; description of common adulterations, food standards, and national food laws and regulations (IA foodstheiradulte02wile).pdf/408

 record of adulterations which is of any consequence. The perfection of the method of sterilization has rendered it unnecessary to make further use of antiseptics for canned peaches. The use of the artificial sweetening agent, saccharin, is almost unknown and is about the only adulteration which at the present time can be practiced without easy detection. It may be confidently stated that the consumer can rely, with a fair degree of assurance, upon the purity of the product which is taken from the can. The only real danger is in the action of the fruit juice upon the imperfect tin plate, and this is a danger which probably will soon pass away, since there is a tendency manifested now to so protect the tin by a varnish of some kind as to render it impossible for any electric action to take place which impairs the color or flavor of the fruit and also to exclude the poisonous salts of tin and lead from the contents of the can.

Adulteration of Canned Fruit.—Artificial coloring: The principal adulteration of canned fruit is that due to artificial coloring. There is, perhaps, no other form of adulteration which has so little excuse. It only needs a cursory observation of the fruits of Nature to show that even in the same varieties they differ to a vast degree in natural tint. Bright colors are especially prized in fruits. For instance, the yellow of the peach, the red of the cherry, the purple of the plum, etc. The object of artificial coloring is to make all kinds and varieties of these fruits imitate those of naturally rich color. Its sole purpose is deception, since it can add nothing whatever to the nutritive value. The claim that it adds to the dietetic value of the fruit, as in other cases of the same kind of argument, is plainly fallacious. The very moment the consumer realizes he is eating an artificially tinted fruit, if his temperament be as artistic as should always be the case, he becomes sensitive to the effort made to deceive him. Such artificially colored foods, thus, instead of tasting better than they otherwise would, have a worse taste due to the feeling of antipathy excited by their presence. Hence there can be no excuse, under any circumstances, for the addition of artificial colors to food products of this kind, or in fact, of any kind except those which are purely synthetic and have no relation in composition or in quality to a natural product. With the exception of cherries and berries, the addition of artificial color to canned fruits is not common.

Another form of adulteration, which fortunately is seldom practiced in fruit, is one which has already been described in sufficient detail, that is, the addition of saccharin, a substance which has even less place in fruits than in vegetables. The addition of a non-sugar, such as saccharin, with an intensely sweet taste for the purpose of inducing the consumer to believe that the article is a natural sweet product, is an adulteration of the most reprehensible type, to say nothing of the evil effects of the adulterant employed upon health. The addition of spices and other condimental substances to fruit