TAMPERING WITH FOOD
SIR,—In his/her admirable comments on food adult' teration, Leslie Adrian says soothingly about the dyeing of oranges, `. . . no one eats the skin.' This ignores the innumerable recipes which include 'the grated rind of an orange' among their ingredients. Furthermore we ourselves make marmalade of sweet oranges and lemons when bitter oranges are out of season.
Some time ago, when doing just this, I realised that the oranges were not only dyed but that some were also varnished. I sent a sample of peel 10 the Ministry of Food and became involved in an abortive correspondence, during which I was assured that the coating was a kind of wax to delay drying' out and was 'harmless.'
Since then, knowing for how many decades the carcinogen Butter Yellow had been considered 'harmless,' and remembering also that oranges are heavily sprayed, with this and that, I have made sweet orange marmalade only from the organically grown oranges supplied through the Soil Associa- tion. These, incidentally, taste as different from the ordinary shop varieties as do home-grown tomatoes from the boring red objects sold as tomatoes in the shops. (Auto-suggestion is powerful. The things look like tomatoes, so people imagine they are eating tomatoes.)—Yours faithfully,
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