How products were counterfeited in the past centuries in Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Ask any layman: "When were the products healthier?" All answers will refer to the past. But with an impressive range - from "under Brezhnev" to "under the tsar-father". Fans of the latest version will add a killer argument: "There was no chemistry then."

Continuous swindle

In general, as the saying goes, "Russia was better before, a goose cost three kopecks." Let's start with him. “Cheating is one of the deceptions in the livestock trade. The small-man-seller, having bought an old skinny bird, tries to put it on sale with the "kazovy end" (presenting the goods from the best side), and for this he inflates this bird, that is, introduces air into it, through the rear opening, and sews up the opening with some art and a little trickery."

This is a quote from Ekaterina Avdeeva, the author of the well-known work "The Handbook of a Russian Experienced Housewife". The publication was published in 1842. As for "chemistry" then it was really sparse, but, as you can see, deception and trade in counterfeits flourished without it.

Those who like to sigh about Russia, "which we have lost," may argue that a skinny bony goose is not very bad for health. Holy truth. But the matter was not limited to a live bird. Nutrition historians confidently say that in tsarist Russia everything that was in one way or another was used for food was forged. And the merchants' tricks were not always safe for health.

“If the beer turns sour, now they put lime in it. Because of that, if you please see, both the look and even the smell are very decent for the guests,”an old waiter, who served a restaurant at the Nizhny Novgorod fair in 1903, told the everyday writer Yevgeny Ivanov.

There are manufacturers who try to preserve not only the name and brand label, but also the taste. This is the real "chemistry". But still, it's not so bad. Lime, that is, calcium hydroxide, can be poisoned, but the consequences will be about the same as from a simple stale beer - vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. A healthy adult will survive this.

Much more dangerous were confectionery, which children like so much. Doctor of Medicine Anna Fischer-Dyckelmann wrote about sweets and lollipops in 1903: “The color of these products is almost always artificial, and often the colors are poisonous. Such are, for example, green paints made from yari-copperhead containing arsenic, red from cinnabar and red lead, white from lead and zinc oxide, blue from mineral and royal azure, yellow from lead lithium, etc."

Among the "etc." a prominent place is occupied by copper sulfate, it is also known to all copper sulfate. In St. Petersburg in the second half of the 1880s. they were poisoned en masse - they generously painted green peas with vitriol. The only plus, if I may say so about the poisoning of almost a thousand people, was that the falsification was recognized quickly, and the guilty were punished approximately - each of the organizers got 15 years in hard labor.

Dust roads

But that was the case of mass poisoning. If there was no particular damage to the health of consumers, the law was much softer. The fraudster was threatened with either three months in prison, or 300 rubles. fine. Moreover, it should be noted that fantasy and resourcefulness, plus a good lawyer, often helped falsifiers get out of the water.

So, in the 1890s. in Nizhny Novgorod, a group that produced surrogate coffee beans was covered. Or rather, not really coffee. Or even not coffee at all. Savvy traders set up the production of grains from clay and gypsum.

And to give the appropriate color and smell, they rinsed bags with gypsum pellets in a solution of real coffee grounds. We sold "coffee" in bulk to the provinces and made a considerable profit.

The fraudsters were caught, but the case of falsification collapsed - the lawyer managed to prove that the buyers were to blame, since the description of the goods "honestly" said that the grains are not a product, but a toy. True, this was noted in small print.

Other, not so inventive fraudsters, carried out with the same coffee, only ground, completely not harmless operations. Finely ground real coffee was added with carefully selected and sifted road dust. The "standard" was considered to be an additive of 30%, but sometimes it reached 70%.

Shall we add some chalk?

“It’s not profitable for me to hang dry mushrooms or tea otherwise than“on a trip”,” a salesman from a Moscow grocery store shared with Yevgeny Ivanov. - To wet it for weight - it will start to rot and mold, as soon as you spoil the goods.

“On a trip” means weighing the goods without the presence of the buyer, who was politely sent to the checkout. But this is still a relatively honest grocer who appreciates the quality of the product and resorts only to body kit. The real dragons of the tea trade sold tea mixed with fireweed and dried sawdust. If this did not seem enough, the tea was really "soaked for weight", and sometimes lead sawdust was added to it.

But the real hit of counterfeit products at that time was dairy products. This is how they treated milk: “Lime is everywhere added to milk to increase the fat content, and chalk is added to cream to make them seem thicker,” wrote Ekaterina Avdeeva.

Oil was also not treated with respect. The most innocent was the coloring of the product with carrot juice, which brought the oil to a "greasy" yellowness. Then they began to use other dyes - onion peel, for example.

The fat content was brought up to standard by outright scam. Melted lamb brains and beef tallow were added, which is still tolerable. Particularly insolent manufacturers did not disdain starch, soapy water and even fish or wood glue.

In other words, those who now complain about “unhealthy GMOs” or “ubiquitous soybeans” can compare which is better - modern food colors or copper sulphate of the “golden age of cooking”.