Adulterant

Adulterants are chemical impurities or substances that by law do not belong in a food, pesticide, or other substance. Some are added intentionally to lower the manufacturing cost of the product, or to modify its characteristics in a deceptiveway.

Usage of adulterants was very common and often was a penal offense. A few examples used through the history are:

• Mogdad coffee, whose seeds have been used as an adulterant for coffee
• Roasted chicoryroots were used for the same purpose, starting during the Napoleonic era in France
• Roasted ground peas, beans, or wheatused to adulterate roasted chicory
• Diethylene glycol, used by some winemakers to fake sweet wines
• Oleomargarineor lard, added to butter
• Rapeseed oil, commonly added to sunflower oiland soybean oil, brassicasterolbeing a marker of its presence
• Ryeflour, corn mealor potatostarchused to dilute more expensive flours; alumis also added to disguise usage of lower-quality flour
• Applejellys were substituted for more expensive fruit jellys, with added colorant and sometimes even little pieces of wood that simulated eg. strawberry seeds
• Artificial colorants, often toxic - eg. copper, zinc, or indigo-based green dyes added to absinthe
• Sudan Iyellow color, added to chili powder
• Water, for diluting milkand beer
• Lower-quality black teadisguised as higher class
• Starch, added to sausages
• Cutting agentsare often used to adulterate (or "cut") illicit drugs

Adulterants can be also added to urine, in order to interfere with the accuracy of drug tests. They are often oxidativein nature - hydrogen peroxide, and bleachhave been used, sometimes with pH-adjusting substances like vinegaror sodium bicarbonate. These can be detected by drug testing labs, but some of the less expensive tests do not look for them.

External links

Catholic encyclopedia: Adulteration of food (1907)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adulterant Wikipedia article Adulterant.