Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1894 — Adulteration of Coffee. [ARTICLE]

Adulteration of Coffee.

“Coffee,” says Dr. Winslow Anderson, of San Francisco, “now one of the most universally used of all beverages, excepting, perhaps, tea and beer, is usually abominably adulterated. It would* seem difficult to imitate coffee, but it is not. A very fair cup of coffee is made from black walnut dust, caramel, and roasted and browned horse liver. This mixture has been ascertained by chemical analysis to be in extensive use. Ground coffee and hotel decoctions often contain roasted and ground peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, corn, rye, and oak bark, while chicory is seldom absent. This chicory, by the way, is itself adulterated with roasted wheat, rye, beans, acorns, carrots, parsnips, beet root, baked livers, Venetian red, colored earths, oak bark,tan and sawdust. Coffee grounds from large hotels have been known to be gathered up, carefully dried and remixed with adulterates and chicory, and sold again as pure coffee. So much for ground coffee. “ Yeast powder is a substance that requires universal scrutiny. Many brands that I have examined contain ammonia, alum, plaster of paris and cream of tarter (which is of itself adulterated with alum, chalk and terra alba). Is it any wonder that people suffer with indigestion and dyspepsia, when their stomachs become coated with plaster of paris?”