Swindled

I've just finished reading Bee Wilson's book Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee - The Dark History of the Food Cheats. It's an excellent and well researched book.

The author goes through the history of food adulteration. The book describes ways food has been padded, poisoned, spiked, coloured, substituted, faked and mislabelled.

I read about the use of alum in bread (at it's peak in the eighteenth century to keep bread made from poor flour light and white). The Victorians used copper in pickles to keep them green, even when they knew it was poisonous.

I knew nothing about ersatz food during the war, and had forgotten how even basmati rice could be adulterated (in 2003 the Food Standards Agency found only 54% of samples from shops all over Britain were pure).

In the US she quotes the FDA - where today the average jar of peanut butter may contain up to 30 insect fragments per 100 grams and up to one rodent hair, tomato juice may contain up to 10 fly eggs or two maggots per 100 grams. Eating insects is not a major concern, it has been estimated that most of us eat a pound or two of insects every year without our knowledge, but at least they're high in protein and nutrients and low in fat!

You can buy Swindled from Amazon here.