- A Blatz from the Past
I remember when there was a big push to use saccharin instead of sugar. Saccharin has actually been around since 1879, was banned as early as 1911, and then was back in favor when the bans were lifted during the sugar rationing of WWI. Now it’s best known in the pink package form of Sweet ‘N Low and the term ‘artificial sweetener’ generally replaces the word ‘saccharin.’
In the ‘70s, the FDA began to research saccharin to see if it was really safe. It was found to cause bladder cancers and so products with saccharin were required to carry a warning label. In 2000, the warning was removed by the U.S. Congress (not the FDA) in response to heavy lobbying by the saccharin industry.
Pregnant women are especially cautioned to stay away from saccharin. Pregnant women and nursing mothers are also cautioned to stay away from alcoholic beverages. But that has not always been the case. Early advertisements for beer and ale often extolled the benefits of hops and malts for both mothers and babies.
It wasn’t too long ago, either, that eggs were determined to be bad for you. Too much cholesterol. Now they are back in favor because that particular cholesterol is the good kind, not the bad kind. But tuna fish is out. Too much mercury. So far, there is no good kind of mercury.
When I was a child, however, we were given bits of mercury to play with during science lessons. It would clump together and roll around on our desks but if we picked it up and threw it down again, it would shatter into fragments. Great fun! We were supposed to learn about the properties of mercury through experimentation. But we didn’t learn it was bad for us.
A few decades later, when I was first teaching, I would go to the lumber store and get asbestos shorts to use for art projects. When mixed with a little water, asbestos shorts made a great modeling substance. I don’t know if it was toxic or not. No one spoke of “toxins” in those days, and these days, even if it is considered toxic, that could change with a little more research. Or Congress could pass a law.
It’s hard to know who or what to believe and even harder to know what or what not to do. “Moderation in all things,” my mother said. “Don’t believe everything you read,” my father said. “Life’s a crap shoot,” say I.
It seems like a lot of these things change yearly. I’m glad that eggs are back in favor, but wish they’d out- law high fructose corn syrup. Certainly they are taking it out of a lot of things, but it’s hidden in plenty of processed foods. According to the movie Super Size Me, artificial sweeteners of all kinds may reduce calories in a product, but weight gain in a person’s body. I guess the bottom line is that there are no quick fixes or short cuts to sneak around the fact that portion size and exercise together with a balanced diet are the best ways to maintain a healthy weight.
I definitely think that a lot of the chemicals the twentieth century hath wrought are responsible for the increase in a whole host of maladies especially cancer. We cannot trust the government to keep us safe from unscrupulous manufacturers or CEOs. It makes shopping something of a mine field, but I’m happy that many companies are getting on the “natural” bandwagon, but that doesn’t mean you can stop reading labels. It is also wonderful that Costco and Fred Meyer are carrying more and more organic products and to some extent, Safeway. Even Sid’s has a few of the same products. I’ve discovered that the Organic Market in Long Beach is not as over-priced as I expected to find it and sometimes a fifteen mile each way drive is not an option.
These days I think it is more important to teach students to be thoughtful consumers than how to sew a blouse. A field trip to the store to read labels?
New parents today have so much to worry about if they believe the “common wisdom” in the media. I too played with mercury, I remember sending two cereal box tops and a dollar for a tiny sample of fissionable material and a tiny lense so that we could watch nuclear decay in tiny burst of light. We played with knives and threw hatchets like a tomahawk, walked to school without an escort, and so much more that was just part of childhood.
Isn’t amazing that we survived?
Mercury thermometers are the most accurate. The digital things are sketchy. Ask a nurse. My kids never bit one. Mine is precious.
I’m not dissing seatbelts, but we stood up in the car seat (sometimes in front), didn’t wear bike helmets or knee pads. I’m surprised the baby boomers survived!
Remember the devices you put your foot into to determine your shoe size? They actually used x-rays to see the structure of your foot. I remember going to the shoe stores and playing around with them. We thought they were great fun…and…our “seat belt” was when Mom would put her arm out in front of us during a quick stop!
Maybe part of the problem is that too many of us have survived for so long. Thus, too much strain on Medicare, Social Security and whatever else. Who knew that by doing all those things bad for us we would become healthy oldsters.
Yeah, crap shoot is probably the most accurate!
Jane, loved your seat belt comment. We had the same system in our car, a mom with a good reach. Then in the back seat sisters protecting each other, seems like quite regularly on those winding roads. The good old days.