Grind some bones to make your bread

Since the discovery of horsemeat in ‘beef’ products, what goes into our food has never been under closer scrutiny, but, says Robert Hume food fraud is nothing new

SHOCKING enough to hit the headlines today, the substitution of genuine articles by inferior ones was an everyday occurrence throughout the world only a century and a half ago.

Floor-sweepings in pepper, sheep dung in tea, red lead in boiled sweets, and alum (a mineral salt, present in today’s deodorants) for so many things — to make bread whiter, pickle greener, and wine brighter. Standards may not have been so sloppy in the distant past.