Arthur Hill Hassall
Image: Wellcome Collection
Accum was a popular science celebrity, and the results of his food fraud research were shocking. His book caused a public uproar. The sheer size of the problem was staggering. “The eager and insatiable thirst for gain” had led to food fraud on an industrial scale across the whole of society.
Take bread, for a relatively harmless example. Almost all of the bread eaten by working class people contained “alum,” an aluminum salt that bakers used to bleach low quality flour. This may have caused health problems for some people, but it was nowhere close to the most dangerous thing in the food supply. Accum felt that the alum issue was “comparatively unimportant.” However, almost all bakers secretly used alum to make cheap bread look like expensive bread. This hoodwinked customers.