The Birth of Pure Food

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AUGUSTAMEDICALEXAMiNER DECEMBER 21, 2018

#81 IN A SERIES

Who is this?

It would not be inaccurate to say that this man has played a direct role in every single bite of food you have ever eaten during your entire life, from your infant formula and those puréed peas and carrots that were your first solid food right down to and including what you just ate a little while ago.

That kind of impact is rather amazing for someone who was born in a log cabin in 1844. His name is Harvey Wiley. He was a pioneering chemist during his academic career, teaching the first chemistry class ever offered in the state of Indiana, beginning in 1873 at Indiana Medical College. (He had earned an M.D. there in 1871.) He then traveled to Harvard in 1873, where he earned a B.S. in chemistry. Thus equipped, he accepted a faculty position back in Indiana, teaching chemistry at then just-opened Purdue University.

He also held the title State Chemist of Indiana, a role which led to his being offered the position of Chief Chemist of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1882. He soon became known as an intrepid crusader for food safety on a national level (intrepid being a fitting word because Wiley was from a farm belt state). Indeed, many barons of the food industry - names like Chicago’s Armour meat packers and others who made fortunes off saccharine and adulterated soft drinks - bitterly opposed Wiley’s efforts to protect the food supply.

He also had to deal with the political squabbles typical of Washington to this day, as well as back-stabbing schemes of his USDA chief chemist predecessor.

Undaunted by it all, Wiley steered the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (often called the Wiley Act), which became law in 1906. Its passage was helped immeasurably by the efforts of Alice Lakey, a New Jersey housewife who invited Wiley to speak to a ladies group in her village association. Galvanized by that event, Lakey organized a campaign that eventually led to more than one million letters being written in support of the Act. She and Wiley met with President Theodore Roosevelt with their letters, garnering his support.

Enforcement of the Act fell to the USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry headed by Wiley, but its efforts were often hampered by litigation on technicalities from powerful food industry groups. In 1927 its charter was altered and the Bureau was renamed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also headed by Wiley.

The FDA was given greater scope still in 1938 when President Franklin Roosevelt signed a new act often abbreviated FD&C. If you’ve seen those letters, they stand for Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. The laws banned advertising false claims, legislated purity standards, and relieved the FDA from the need to prove malicious or fraudulent intent in its enforcement actions.

Wiley was often frustrated by the politics of his position, and in 1912 resigned to accept a similar position, guarding the safety of consumers: he took over the laboratories of Good Housekeeping Magazine, testing products and awarding the magazine’s coveted Seal to those that passed muster.

Wiley remained at the magazine until his death 18 years later on June 30, 1930, the 24th anniversary of the signing of the Pure Food and Drug Act. +

For more information, see From the Bookshelf on p. 11

ON THE ROAD TO BETTER HEALTH

A PATIENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Editor’s note: Augusta writer Marcia Ribble, Ph.D., is a retired English and creative writing professor who offers her unique perspective as a patient. Contact her at marciaribble@hotmail.com

by Marcia Ribble

This is one of those days which cannot quite decide what it wants to be, sunny, cloudy, rainy, or none of the above, just transiently moody. I recognize that feeling as I wonder what tomorrow will bring into my life. There have been too many events lately which have put large frames around the fragility of life, calling our attention to the absolute lack of stability we all face from time to time, even though most days we move from sunrise to sunset without giving it a thought.

I used to think that when I got older my own eventual mortality would be foremost in my thoughts, but it’s not. I find my days occupied with the most trivial tasks, usually revolving around things like bringing in and reading the newspaper, fixing breakfast, watching my favorite morning TV show (Let’s Make a Deal) to see what I’d choose, and taking a nap in the afternoon, fixing dinner, watching the evening news, and finding time for Facebook.

There are whole days when my most pressing thought is that I really ought to wash clothes before I run out of clean underwear. That isn’t even remotely an existential thought, although I am quite capable of being philosophical when it suits me. Eschatology, pondering the length, quality, and terminal reality of life, is a branch of philosophy focusing on death and its finality or lack thereof. It can also be used to talk about the final days of humankind. End times, whether they are mine or all of humanity’s, don’t seem terrible relevant to

WHICH WILL IT BE?

Is that a true statement? Or is it a trick question? Is the answer, “Of course you can eat sweets if you are diabetic — if you want to be a cheater.”

The truth is, diabetics can safely eat candy, chocolates, desserts and other foods that are not exactly short on sugar.

me when I am shredding cabbage to make coleslaw. But once in a while someone dies rapidly and without time to even record astonishment that the time isn’t far off in the future, but right now, this very second, without time to go to the bathroom, make a planned call, or pet the dog. Such an event jangles my comfortable belief that the breath I am taking right now will be followed by another hundred thousand breaths.

That kind of thinking about life being more certain than death is reasonable, given the fact that for all 75 years since I was born that next breath, and those following it, could be counted on just as surely as that sun will rise in the morning — even if it’s cloudy and I can’t see it. The question then, is, once aware of life’s impermanence, what will I focus on: life as I am living it right this second, or death?

A while back I was in the hospital, very sick with life-threatening issues, and not one time while I spent nearly four months getting sort of better did I ever consider the possibility that I could die. People around me at that time can attest to the fact that I hated the hospital bed to the point where they eventually found a recliner I could sleep in. I was too weak to walk, too weak to even roll over in bed, too weak to bother with eating most of the time, but the essential me was able to resist when I didn’t like something they were doing to treat me – or not treat me. My mother used to say as long as a sick or injured child is making lots of noise they will probably be OK. It’s the quiet ones you need to worry about.

I’ve always been among the quiet ones. +

I’M DIABETIC. NO SWEETS FOR ME!

The key, just as it is for those who don’t have diabetes, is moderation.

Dessert or chocolates are no more off limits for diabetics than they are for anyone else. But a diabetic should satisfy his or her craving with a small portion. A taste of ice cream, not a whole bowl; one bite of cake, not a huge slab or the corner piece with extra frosting.

A person with diabetes who is an obedient and compliant patient can actually enjoy great overall health benefits. Healthful

meal planning and eating sweets in moderation are but two examples of healthful and salubrious living that might escape someone without diabetes.

The non-diabetic might approach a holiday buffet with a “Game on!” mentality and end up overeating plenty of unhealthy foods, while a thoughtful and conscientious diabetic is going to skip the less healthful options and choose wisely and moderately.

And yes, some of those choices can be sweets. +