Food with additives

Not only was food inadvertently contaminated, but things were added to it to make it more palatable.  Professionally made bread included chalk and alum to make it white.  Bread in London was described by a doctor as “a deleterious paste mixed up with chalk, alum, and bone ashes, insipid to the taste and destructive to the constitution.”  Bread could also be made with bad corn.

Not only was there lead in drinking water, but acids in foods released the lead used in pottery or pewter containers, and cooking in copper and brass pots added those poisonous chemicals to food, too.  Turpentine was used to flavor gin.  (Picard, 64-65.)  Sugar was cheap but whitened by lime (the chemical, not the fruit).

The cholesterol levels in people of this time must have been incredible.  Not only was meat the mainstay of the middle and upper classes, but butter was lathered on vegetables and meat, and cheese was eaten in huge amounts.

 

Additives that were thought to be helpful included spices familiar to us.  Black pepper was supposed to cut phlegm and help with digestion (however, it inflames the blood if crushed to small).  Ginger helps with gas (“the expulsion of wind”).  Saffron unstuffs pipes of the lungs, and cloves are good for the head, heart, stomach, and eyes. (Waller, 187-88.)  Obviously, if your meat was spoiled you would want to add spices to cover up the rancid taste