The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

摘要

Everything was better in the good old days-or was it? It turns out that we have to dismiss any nostalgic ideas we might have of our great-grandparents’healthy lifestyle.Instead of eating produce bought directly from farmers,foregoing ready meals and E numbers,people at the turn of the 20th century were faced with formaldehyde-laced milk,bleached flour and canned vegetables dyed with copper sulfate.Industrialisation of food production not only made more goods available to more people,but also hailed a time when products were modified with,at best,non-edible ingredients-think floor sweepings in pepper-or,at worst,toxic compounds such as arsenic dyes.But US food manufacturers were in for a wild ride when Harvey Wiley became chief chemist for the Department of Agriculture in 1883.