Note 577 — OF THE ADULTERATION OF FOOD.

In this country, bread is chiefly divided into white, wheaten, and household, differing only in degree of purity; in the first, all the bran is separated; in the second, only the coarser; in the third, none at all; so that fine bread is made only of flour; wheaten bread of flour with a mixture of the finer bran; and household, of the whole substance of the grain, without taking out either the coarse bran, or fine flour. Stat. 8 Ann, c. 18. In the statute of assize of bread and ale, to be hereafter noticed, (51 Hen. 3,) mention is made of wastel-bread, cocket-bread, and bread of treet; which answer to the three sorts of bread above mentioned, viz. white, wheaten, and household-bread.

The bread of the London bakers maybe certainly considered as forming a very distinct species, although by no means a definite one; there are no less than six different kinds of flour brought into the London market, which are designated by the following terms, viz. 1, fine flour; 2, seconds; 3, middlings; 4, fine middlings; 5, coarse middlings; 6, twenty-penny flour; besides which the London bread-flour is not unfrequently deteriorated by having beans and peas ground up with it: now it is a fact generally admitted that the very best wheaten flour can alone produce beautifully white bread, unless some bleaching substance be employed, in which case however inferior flour may be made into bread equally specious to the eye; for such a purpose alum is universally employed by the London bakers, and it has become a medical question whether the health of the community is likely to be affected by the practice. We should say that, generally, so small a proportion as ten or fifteen grains of alum in a quartern loaf could hardly produce any mischief, although we are inclined to think that certain constitutions may be sensible to its influence, and that infants may occasionally suffer from it; these effects are of course more likely to occur to persons who only visit London occasionally, although upon this subject some important fallacies may exist; and it is by no means satisfactorily established that the costiveness, which is sometimes experienced by country residents on their first coming to London, arises from the alum present in the bread; for admitting even that it depends upon the bread, it may be connected with the change in the relative coarseness of the flour alone, for we have shewn in another work (Pharmacologia, edit. 5, page 160) that bran renders wheaten flour laxative from its mechanical action upon the inner coats of the intestines. But a much more iniquitous practice than that of adding alum to bread has been detected: bakers have been convicted of using gypsum, pipe-clay, and chalk, and not long since a very extensive fraud was carried on in Cornwall, where a very considerable portion of the Porcelain clay (decomposed felspar) from Saint Annes, was introduced into the bread; and the author of this note was lately informed by Mr. Hume, of Long Acre, that on examining some biscuits prepared for the use of the navy, he found as much as eight per cent of gypsum. Dr. Reines observes that this adulteration is very common in Germany, where the same mills are employed to grind corn for the inhabitants, and gypsum for the purpose of a mineral manure to the lands. It may be necessary to remark, before quitting the subject of the adulteration of bread, that we possess no summary and unexceptionable chemical test for the detection of alum, since common salt, which necessarily enters into the composition of the loaf, often contains saline impurities which may occasion precipitates like those we might attribute to alum.