WHAT WE EAT, &c.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 123, 7 July 1871, Page 5

WHAT WE EAT, &c.

Under the heading of " What we Eat, Drink, and Wear," the 'Australian Journal' this month gives the first of a series of articles upon frauds in food, medicine, and clothing, which promise to yield some useful information. The present article gives some analysis, by Mr. Cosmo Newberry, of several articles amongst teetotal cordials and patent medicines. With regard to these teetotal cordials the article states: '•The majority of cordiali so called, which are drunk with the greatest complacency by the unsuspecting people who have vowed to drink no alcohol, we find to consist almost wholly of proof spirit! Twenty-seven samples, selected without prejudice, give an average of 22 40 per cent. That is to say in broad and familiar terms in an average 10U glasses of teetotal cordial there will be 22 glasses of proof spirit ! If judged by single samples, the dalusion perpetrated becomes more apparent. For instance in a sample orange bitters, bottled by Messrs. Flintoff, we find that 37"5, or a little more than 37 glasses of proof spirit in every 100 glasses, of cordial, while Bickford's stoinac i bitteri (a teetotal drink) shows on the sanu reckoning more than 39 glasses. In other words, ten teetotallers, each imbibing in the course of the day 10 glasses of Bickford's bitters, would by dinner time have each drunk within a teaspoon ul of four glasses of proof spirit, equal at 1 ast to tight glasses of undiluted brandy!"