‘If science has been invaluable in detecting food adulteration, the consumer still has a role to play.’
By ADAM GRYBOWSKI Staff Writer
Of universal human experiences, food fraud might not come to mind. But in her new book, “Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee” (Princeton University Press, $26.95), the British food writer Bee Wilson documents how the food-eating public — namely, everyone — has been deceived, cheated and poisoned by food fraudsters throughout history.
The Romans had leaded wine, for instance. We have fake organics.
Ms. Wilson, a twice-named Guild of Food Writers food journalist of the year, will be discussing her book at the Princeton Public Library on Wednesday (Oct. 15).
In recent years a number of books detailing the flaws of modern-day industrial food systems and food culture has hit the best seller list. In May, The New Yorker published Ms. Wilson’s take on a few of them, including Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food,” Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” and Paul Roberts’ “The End of Food.”
“I found myself gripped by these books,” Ms. Wilson says. “And though I greatly agree with their food criticisms, I thought they lacked a historical dimension.”
In the work of these authors Ms. Wilson found the notion that in the past, before the perils of the present food system, lay a golden era of healthy eating and cooking.
“I suspected that wasn’t true,” she says. “Generally, people always want to say that things were better in the good old days.”
The problem of food adulteration can be traced back about 200 years. Though opportunities and incentives vary from time to time, certain traits are common to the worst incidents of swindling. The explosive growth of cities, for example, often outpaces a government’s ability to regulate the food industry. London of the early- to mid-19th century fits the bill, as does New York in the 1850s and modern-day China.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Ms. Wilson connects the similarities between the “swill milk” scandal in mid-19th century New York to the current milk safety crisis unfolding in China.
Chinese milk producers are suspected of intentionally adulterating milk with an industrial chemical, commonly used to make plastics and fertilizer, to increase the appearance of nutritional value. Four children have died and more than 50,000 have become sick.
While muckrakers have been instrumental in bringing food scandals to light, the heroes of Ms. Wilson’s account are scientists.
Ms. Wilson, whose first book was “The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us” (John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2005), first came across the chemist Frederick Accum while working on her Ph.D. at Cambridge. His 1820 “Treatise on Adulterations” exemplifies how a rigorous scientific analysis can supersede the senses in detecting abuse.
“Using a microscope is such a simple idea to us, but no one had ever thought about it before,” Ms. Wilson says.
If science has been invaluable in detecting food adulteration, the consumer still has a role to play. The knowledge of what is good, through experience and tradition, is a basic test against adulteration.
So is a shorter supply chain.
“Swindling hasn’t been so bad when we lived close to the land,” Ms. Wilson says. “It’s a question of trust. If you know who produces your food, there are going to be consequences (if they deceive you).”
Though an entire industry of fakery exists, ranging from pirated DVDs to fake drugs, Ms. Wilson says food matters more.
“Food is such an intimate thing. (Adulterating food) is arguably a more wicked thing to do than pirating a DVD.”
Swindles disproportionately affect the poor, who at times succumb to preposterous artifice — preposterous enough to make one wonder why a person would fall for such a scam.
For example, Manchester factory workers in the 1840s would buy coconuts to treat themselves on the weekends. Some sellers filled old and milkless coconuts with water, sealed them with a cork and sold them to the poor.
“It comes down to cost,” Ms. Wilson says. “(Poor people) can’t buy the real thing. They half know they’re not buying the real thing, but they want to have some sort of approximation of it.”
The approximation of food, its true taste and heritage, is not something that only afflicts the poor.
“The sad thing is, when adulteration is endemic, there’s a kind of apathy that sets in,” Ms. Wilson says. “It leads to a state where people don’t know the difference (between authentic and adulterated food).”
Today people are eating bread that their ancestors would not recognize as such (e.g., Wonder Bread). Once a tipping point is reached, an entire generation lives and eats without knowing what a traditional loaf of bread tastes like. And not only that, after time a person will prefer the adulterated version to the authentic.
One of the most popular examples of legalized adulteration is vanillin, a manufactured taste that has come to represent to many the true taste of vanilla.
“Compared to the worst scandals, a bit of vanillin seems harmless,” Ms. Wilson says. But flavoring is based on deception and can be used to create an illusion about a processed food product, otherwise bland and without nutrition.
“Human beings have nine thousand taste buds, which send us complex evolutionary signals about which foods are safe and good to eat,” Ms. Wilson writes. “In manipulating these tastes, the flavourist convinces the public that food is something other than what it really is.”
While the developed world is less susceptible to the most scandalous acts of swindling, legalized adulteration may prove the most problematic. And though such cases may not pose an immediate health risk and are, in fact, legal, they pose other risks.
“It’s not a new problem, though it’s a real problem,” Ms. Wilson says. “I think it’s worrying. There’s more of a gray area now. With a bit of padding or dilution, people will accept (the adulterated version) as the real thing.”

