GERMANY'S FOOD

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3060, 23 April 1917, Page 3

GERMANY'S FOOD

SOME QUEER COMPOUNDS.

Weird, "substitutes for food" are being offered to the hungry people of Berlin, according to discoveries made by thu Chemical Department of tho municipality. Some of their findings are published in the latest German papers in connection with tho opening in Berlin of a "Gorman Food-Substitute Exhibition." •

Their report tells an amusing story of barbers; blacksmiths, and cab-driv-ers, suddenly converted by war condiiion3 into "food manufacturers," and of the miraculous concoctions which {aey have contrived to place on the marlets, states the "Sydney Tele"raph." Tho official chemists advise tlie puoTic to exercise great ■ vigilance in purchasing the. patent soup-oubes, "meat" extracts, pudding powders, ana other "substitutes" which now abound, as most of them are. not only downright swindles, but a grave danger to public health. ■

/There is a particularly large traffic in so-called ('meat bouillon substitute cubes."- Although long since officially decreed that meat-soup cubes must contain at least 7i per. cent, of meat extract, "substitutes" now-on sale often contain 97 per cent, of : puro cooking salt richly seasoned with dye-stuffs. Neither meat nor anything even faintly resembling meat is discoverable in them. A "beef soup" powder, attractively packed in boxes embellished with an'o3?s head, consists of wheaten meal, cooking salt, a pinch of glutin substanco, and a mere odor of meat extract. A powder "guaranteed to taste liko Liptauer cheese" (a favourite Prussian delicacy) is manufactured out of a rough red powder mixed with 70 parts cooking salt and 30 parts cayenne pepper, the whole "seasoned" _ with carraway. seed. Butter acids sprinkled over the mixture produce a. cheese-like aroma. -■ '■ \ "Under the seductive title of "dumplings with bouillon" one may purchase two paper bags which are described as ■being quite as digestible as their contents of salt, dried, vegetables, and' potato-Hour. "Of bouillon," says the town chemist, "there is not an iota." As cooking salt is the main ingredient of the "meat extract" .substitutes, potato-flour is.the article chiefly drawn upon for "pudding-powders." There are high-sounding lemon, almond, and raspberry "puddings," which prove, on analysis, to be powders derived from dyed potato-flour. ■ 'The hairdressers and other recruits to the war food industry are said to be making huge profits from "perfuming" potato-Jlour with "•extracts of vanilla, ■milk; and various fruits, and selling it 'in the guise of "pudding-powders." In a so-called "omelette powder" tho official analysts searched in vain for even the glimmer of eggs—it proved to be common baking powder doctored with dyes. An entirely worthless "pepper substitute" sells readily at 2s; a pound. The Press adjures Berlin's nousewives to mako war on conscienceless food fakers.' ' .