Bearing in mind the superlative importance to our well-being of Flavor
in the food we eat, the reader is now in a position to appreciate the
full force of a third indictment to be brought against those who spoil
our food. The first indictment was that they use chemical preservatives
which arrest digestion and often act as cumulative poisons; the second,
that they use chemicals which enable unscrupulous persons to sell foods
made of nauseating and dangerous raw material, so disguised as to fool
the buyer.
The culprits now to be arraigned are those who, from ignorance,
indolence, or greed to get rich quick, adopt devices which spoil the
Flavor of our food and thus destroy our appetite and undermine the
health of the community.
Denatured is the word used for alcohol that has been made unfit to
drink by the addition of chemicals, and denatured is hardly too
strong a word to apply to many if not most of the foods offered in the
American markets and stores, the offense being aggravated by the fact
that the prices usually asked for these are quite as high as those
asked for foods preserved by the wholesome old condimental methods,
although the cost to the maker is only a fraction of what it would be
if those methods were followed.
Palatable, appetizing smoked bacon and hams are still to be found in
our markets by those who know a thing or two, and sternly insist on
getting what they ask for; but for the vast majority of consumers
smoked meats have disappeared. Meats lose weight--up to 20 per
cent.--during the process of smoking, and therefore bring the dealer
less profit. What he offers is usually denatured--unappetizing and
indigestible. The same holds true of smoked fish, which used to
make an epicure's mouth water. Why it does so no longer is shown by
the following paragraphs from Philadelphia, printed in the New York
"Evening Post":
_Fish Was Dyed, not Smoked_
The dairy and food bureau of the State Agricultural Department
has discovered that a large number of delicatessen and other
stores of this city have been for a long time selling "dyed"
fish as a substitute for smoked fish. When Harry P. Cassidy,
the agent of the bureau told the retail store proprietors what
they were doing, they were surprised, as they had purchased
the stuff as genuine smoked fish.
Cassidy's attention to the food article was attracted by its
rich red color. Purchasing some, he had it examined, and the
expert reported that he could dye wool with the coloring
matter extracted from it. In smoking fish there is a loss of
fifteen pounds to every hundred, it is said, but in dyeing
there is no loss at all. This permitted the violators of the
law to undersell their competitors in the smoked fish industry.
Nor is our fresh fish usually more palatable. New York, for instance,
ought to be a paradise of fish eaters, yet how seldom is it served in
prime condition, even in leading restaurants! In Germany they have
various ways of bringing fish to market alive, even in interior towns;
over here they are kept in cold storage for weeks, months--indeed
years, although fish deteriorates by this process much more rapidly
than even poultry--of which more anon; and everybody knows that the
poorest kind of fish just out of the water is better than the best kind
after it has been out a day or two.
Were we a gastronomic nation we would rise in revolt against the
wholesale denaturing of our food to be presently described in more
detail. We should insist on always having real French or German-style
bread, with crisp, tasty crust, refusing the soggy loaves made of
bleached, bolted flour robbed of its nutritious phosphates and sources
of Flavor; refusing also the machine-polished rice deprived of its
nutritious outer parts, in which lies the delicate Flavor of this
cereal, leaving it pretty to look at, but, as one of the Government's
agricultural experts, David Fairchild, has forcibly expressed it, "as
tasteless as the paste that a paper-hanger brushes on his rolls of
wallpaper."
We should exclude the chemically greened teas dumped into our groceries
because they are not wanted in any other country. We should protest
against the peaches and pears and other fruits formerly brought into
our markets soft, sun-ripened, luscious, but now offered to us hard,
unripe, flavorless.
The melancholy list of gastronomic misdeeds might be prolonged
indefinitely.
In all these cases, let me emphasize this fact once more, that what is
eliminated from the food is its very soul, its precious Flavor, which
makes it appetizing and enjoyable and therefore digestible. We allow
covetous or ignorant manufacturers as well as incompetent or indolent
cooks to spoil our naturally good food because we do not as a nation,
realize that on its pleasurableness depend our health and comfort, our
happiness and capacity for hard work, more than perhaps on anything
else--a point which cannot be emphasized too often.
Now for a few details, beginning with the treatment to which our
poultry is subjected, which has long been a national calamity and a
scandal of the first order.