16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, July 20, 1911: Everything is becoming so usual, nothing out of the ordinary at all.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma didn’t write much today, I going to go off on a tangent–
I was amazed to discover that the use of saccharin was banned in July 1911 by the Pure Food Referee Board in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to an article in National Food Magazine called “The Passing of Saccharin”:
After July 1 when you partake of sweets you may know they are sweetened with sugar or syrup and not with a chemical. Saccharin, a poisonous derivative of coal tar and a near relative of benzoate, has been the popular sweetening agent employed by food adulterators, and heretofore, the government has permitted them to use it, despite the evidence of its harmfulness given by experts in Europe and America.. . .
It has a preservative power and is very cheap. But the Referee Board, which has been investigating Saccharin, has found it guilty of causing indigestion and otherwise injuring the system. Therefore, the government has issued a ruling entirely prohibiting its use after July 1.
National Food Magazine (June, 1911)
In 1912, the government reversed the decision and again allowed the use of saccharin, but it has remained very controversial. Studies in the 1960s and 70s suggested that it caused bladder cancer—and the government again attempted to ban its use in 1972. Diabetics, opposed the ban, and it continued to be allowed (during the 1970s through the 1990s products containing saccharin were required to include a warning label that it was a suspected carcinogen).
Fast forward to today—the nation is worried about obesity—and obsessed with low-calorie foods. Foods containing saccharin are now promoted as “healthy foods.” For example, Pepsi and Coke promote the use of reduced calorie drinks in schools; and school vending machines are filled with these products as part of lucrative contracts.
Hmm—To frame it from a 1911 perspective: Are we talking about healthy drinks in the schools versus unhealthy drinks, or are we really talking about adulterated drinks versus sugar and corn syrup-laden drinks? (Personally I want to think that there is a third option that includes neither of the above. Somehow schools managed without vending machines filled with drinks in 1911.)
