Food Adulteration

Radio Mensa offers this podcast about the history of food adulteration, a sibling of today's counterfeiting. The podcast focuses on 19th century Britain, where the foolishly class-obsessed masses aspired "to eat the white bread of the rich and to feed their children an array of multi-colored candies once the preserve of the wealthy, but where almost no one asks how their bread could be so cheap yet so white or why their children's sweets can be colored in shades not known to nature."

Consuming the counterfeits of such luxuries was often fatal. Adulteration of beer was also a major problem, and it wasn't until after 1820 when the Western World made a concerted effort to combat the "swindlers" of food adulteration.