Deborah BLUM, The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Penguin Press, New York, 2018
According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, “food” as “material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy”. However, we’re all aware that food isn’t solely a material that satisfies our metabolism’s needs. Food is also a mental concept with plenty of other ideas associated to it. We know that eating, with all the ceremonial and ritualistic forms it takes, is a social act that connects us to others and also a mode of self-expression of which sometimes we aren’t aware of.
In other words, what we eat, what time do we eat, whom we eat with, how we eat... tells a lot about us and our societies. For instance, isn’t the seating plan on a sit-down dinner a good indicator of the social hierarchy and a demonstration of the power relations in a particular group? You might instantly think about medieval banquets or modern-times’ state dinners hosted by government officials, but the reality is that even wedding dinners are perfect examples “You can't sit your cousin near her ex-boyfriend. Your aunts don't get along. Your uncle needs someone who will down a tequila shot with him, and your very conservative grandfather and very liberal roommate should be separated by at least three seats.”[1]
Food isn’t different: The way we define food, we perceive it, we produce and consume it, and how we regulate it through social norms are extremely useful to those who would like to analyze us from various perspectives. A typical example is how our food preferences are influenced -or determined- not only by our social class and income but also what our social group considers as appropriate. As Eric Robinson, of the University of Liverpool says: “if a person's sense of self is strongly guided by their identity as a member of their local community and that community is perceived to eat healthily, then that person would be hypothesized to eat healthily in order to maintain a consistent sense of social identity."[2] Hence, we might be eating to keep this bond to the community alive, as well as for being “nourished”, let alone the taste (which is also both a personal and a sociocultural phenomenon).
Poison Squad by Deborah Blum is a book about the fascinating story of a Harvey W. Wiley and how he contributed to the enactment of the 1908 Pure Food and Drug Act, still referred to as “Dr. Wiley’s Law”. His story covers the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, during which the American consumers had been served “adultered”, “tainted” and potentially harmful products with unacceptable levels of chemicals, of which the effects on human metabolism was mostly unknown. Milk was often diluted, it could be “enhanced” with whitening agents like chalk or plaster, and highly hazardous preservatives like formaldehyde. Even pureed calf brains could be added to mimic the “expected layer of cream”.[3] “’Honey’” often proved to be thickened, colored corn syrup, and ‘vanilla’ extract a mixture of alcohol and brown food coloring. ‘Strawberry’ jam could be sweetened paste made from mashed apple peelings laced with grass seeds and dyed red. ‘Coffee’ might be ‘largely sawdust, or wheat, beans, beets, peas, and dandelion seeds, scorched black and ground to resemble the genuine article. Containers of ‘pepper’, cinnamon’, or ‘nutmeg’ were frequently laced with a cheaper filler material such as pulverized coconut shells, charred rope, or occasionally floor sweepings. ‘Flour’ routinely contained crushed stone or gypsum as a cheap extender. Ground insects could be mixed into brown sugar, often without detection—their use linked to an unpleasant condition known as ‘grocer’s itch’.”[4] Canned food, processed meat, alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages were not in a better state and causing serious health problems at consumers.
Margarine ad, 1948 (source)
Wiley, a chemist by training, hold the office of Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture from 1882 to 1912 where he managed to establish a modern laboratory were various food products were inspected and the ingredients analyzed in order to inform the authorities as well as the public through regular reports. Wiley and his lab are also famous with the research project baptized the “poison squad” by the press, which is a series of experiments on human test subjects (volunteers) who were given certain widely used food additives and preservatives during their controlled meals and later followed-up by Wiley’s team (In my opinion Wiley would have a hard time trying to obtain an ethics approval today). For more than 30 years, Dr. Wiley literally fought against different interest groups until his struggle gave way to the 1908 Act. He had powerful, reliable and well-organized allies too, such as the National Consumers’ League, women’s clubs, some state officials, representatives and senators, as well as some businessman, and producers who wanted to distance themselves from the “amoral” industries where the malpractice was widespread.
It’s impossible to read this story without reflecting on our relationship to food and to eating, especially to some of the current “healthy diet” discourses, which, as I realized after reading Poison Squad, are variations of a very old discourse. While people frequently lament these days about food that is unhealthy for human consumption produced by “ruthless corporations”, excessive levels of chemicals and additives, genetically altered ingredients, Blum’s book tells us that even our grand-grand fathers were complaining about perceived and real harms of processed food as well. The pure food nostalgia -“everything was natural when I was a kid”- has nothing new at all, and “the fact that the foods were often processed and packed with preservatives seems to get lost in nostalgic translation”.[5] The manufacturers themselves have always been aware of this longing to a glorified, imaginary past and pushed terms like natural, pure, artisanal, home-made, authentic, while labeling their products. As elegantly put by Alana Toulin in her thesis: “As the promotion of pure food then and now demonstrates, the compulsion to return to an earlier age when life was more “real” and “honest” existed at the turn of the twentieth century as strongly as it does today.”[6]
So, is “don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food” a piece of good advice?[7] Should we go for the “paleo-diet” or avoid all the foods without an organic label? Can our societies truly survive without the modern food industry and its processing methods and technologies? In our times, what means “natural” or “organic” food? The debate is undoubtedly a very interesting one and tightly connected to a good number of socio-political issues. “Poison Squad” is a good starting point for developing some reflection on those. While reading that book, once again, I couldn’t help myself but think about how the limits of safety are drawn through heated debates between various interest groups, political and administrative elite, and the scientists. Late 19th century’s America wasn’t an exception to this phenomenon as nicely illustrated in Deborah Blum’s book.
[1] https://theweek.com/articles/567878/how-navigate-dinner-party-seating-politics [2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270722.php#3 [3] DEBORAH, Blum, The Poision Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Pinguin Press, New York, 2018, p.2 [4] Ibid. [5] https://www.foodpr.ie/food-nostalgia/ [6] TOULIN, Alana, Unease and Nostalgia: The Marketing of “Pure Food” in the United States, 1890-1920, M.A. Thesis (dir. Andrew Johnston), Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, 2014, p.129 [7] POLLAN, Michael, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, Penguin Books, New York, 2009, p.27
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