Chemicals in My Food

The is and the ought of science communication

The Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume set out a strict distinction between statements describing reality (“the world is this way”) and normative statements (“the world should be this way”) and argued that any amount of the former cannot settle the latter.  For example, “you have fallen out of plane and should pull the rip cord of your parachute” contains some statements about reality – this is your situation, this is a reasonable description of the consequences of your actions – as well as a recommendation for the action that flows from these facts.  Hume would argue that the “should” recommendation requires some additional information about your goals.  You should do this only if you wanted to not die – likely but not certain and completely distinct from the factual statements about your situation.

Hume’s insight isn’t some sort of fundamental law of the universe, and other philosophers have disputed it, but in common practice it’s good to be suspicious of anyone claiming their empirical facts in themselves mean you must do something.  That isn’t to say using science to establish empirical facts isn’t incredibly useful to making a decision or that technologies can’t create new options (“Hey – we’ve done the calculations, and we’re pretty sure hitting the ground at this speed will be fatal and this parachute will slow you down enough to survive!”) only they don’t resolve the moral issue – what ought you to do?

Which brings us to modern issues around science communication. While science itself is about attempts to describe the universe in terms of empirical facts, science communication is more ambiguous.  One important question is about the purpose of the communication.  It is possible, just about, to imagine a case of someone trying to communicate the findings and processes of science while being completely disinterested in what the person you are communicating with does with it. However, which facts are selected for communication can influence the political outlook of the recipient.  If you are studying the risks of a certain chemical, you’ll communicate that rather than the possible benefits. Even if you have a sincere interest in communicating “just the facts”, they will likely impact the views of a non-scientist about whether the chemical should be used or not. In most cases though, real science communication is going to carry some level of persuasion with it and have the effect, perhaps unconsciously, of convincing the recipient of the merits of a certain course of action.

And this is completely fine – so long as the science communicator realizes they are communicating some nonscientific “ought” along with their science “is”. Problems occur when scientists don’t heed Hume’s warning and come to believe that their facts do compel action in others.  This is harder to avoid the more you become invested in your facts.  Practically doing science requires years of dedication that would be difficult to maintain if these were just dry facts separated from their capacity to change the world.  You study the toxicity of a compounds because you are worried about health effects, you study the uses of a chemical because you are excited about making new products. You are surrounded by a culture of people, the scientists and their sponsors, which shapes and reinforces your viewpoints but because you live in that culture it becomes hard for you to see.

When you try to communicate your science (and embedded policy preferences) outside your culture then the conflicts become more obvious. Industry groups might still campaign to use a chemical despite the potential hazards you’ve found; environmental groups might still oppose it despite the wonderful benefits you have discovered.  Politicians might take a different view than you expected based on how they see the risks and benefits to their constituents or to their own careers and they might legitimately use completely non-scientific facts to make their decision. The science that neatly resolved the issue within your community becomes just one more item to be used in a political fight.

Expecting policy (political decisions for action)  to flow inevitably from a limited set of scientific facts makes actually resolving real political differences difficult.  Anyone disagreeing with you is not merely valuing the wrong things, rather their whole sense of reality is wrong, so they must be either stupid or lying.  All of this is a misunderstanding of what science is and is destructive to politics.  

At its best, science tries to say something factual (or at least useful) about the nature of the universe, however the practice of science is always political - what is studied, who gets to perform the studies, which paradigms are accepted.  The practice of science communication takes all of this to the wider audience outside science and deserves a higher level of thought from the scientist about what their role should be (examples).  Facts are vitally important, and science offers wonderful methods to establish them, but facts alone are never going to completely resolve the issue of what we should do next. Science communicators might want to communicate that too.

Some thoughts on being middle aged and wrong

Middle age sneaks up on you.  It starts as jokes with friends – going to be early, paying bills on time, taking out a mortgage or buying insurance – “ah - we’re so middle aged!”.  We all laugh at the ridiculousness of the suggestion until, eventually, reality lets us in on the joke.  I’m turning 50 this year; not only middle aged but on the back slope of it.  But it’s not at all bad here – you get a perspective on life.

By middle age I think, most people have had a chance to have been completely changed their position on an issue.  Some strongly held political or religious view will have changed or just the social sense of what you held as normal has shifted.  The views things you thought a few decades ago seem, at best naïve.  The question is, what to do about it?  

I think most people start with ideas of social or personal progress.  By becoming wiser and learning more we refine our views. Society is changing at the same time, improving, and our more enlightened views reflect the better world we are making.  This view might carry you through your 20s and 30s but eventually, as you struggle to learn a new software update or find your glasses, you might start to wonder if you are really all that much smarter than you were a decade earlier and, by the time a younger generation starts changing things, you might become increasingly concerned with the costs as well as the benefits of “progress”.  There is value to persisting to the sense that you are just becoming “more right” as you get older, but by following this path too long you miss out on a unique opportunity, the great gift of middle age; the experience of having been completely wrong about something.  

Most people believe they are empathic and try to use this talent to work well with others.  While the intent is good, and perhaps the best approach available, I suspect you can’t really think yourself into someone else’s life, you have to live it. And by middle age you’ve done that.  You were one thing – a person with values, passions, experiences, certainties – now you are another and you will go on to become different again.  One person, related but distinct, changed by life.

My younger self held views I find deeply wrong now, but I’m sympathetic because I know they were only a reflection of the experiences I’d lived to that point.  My older self will probably say the same about me, and I hope he will extend the same courtesy. Now look around you.  All these other people are on different pathways. Sometimes, they disagree with you, sometimes they do things you wouldn’t, and sometimes they drive you mad.  Sometimes you need to argue with their views or oppose their actions but, at very least, they deserve some measure of the understanding you offer your younger self. Middle age gives you the experience to try do that.

Phase two of the eMeal project!

“Truthfully eMeal was just phase one for us” says Chad Borington, the Harvard alumnus and Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind the startup.  “Science and technology has never been applied to food and we saw the whole space was ready for disruption”.  The original eMeal did just that – combining personalized genetics and the results from the latest health and wellness simulations to formulate a beverage blend that guaranteed optimum health.  “That was the biggest challenge initially,” laughed Borington “If people drank too they became literally too healthy!” Each eMeal blend was formulated from local organic ingredients then express shipped to the consumer in a polystyrene crate chilled with dry ice. There was an app too for some reason.

However, phase two of the project promises to be even more transformative!  “We saw the inefficiencies involved in getting people to actually drink eMeals” said Borington “and realized we could simply just flush the product down the toilet avoid all of that”.  That was the genesis of the eShit – a personalized bionutrient beverage that is formulated just for you, then flushed down the drain.  Scientists believe it is every bit as effective as the original eMeal and avoids the unpleasantness of actually drinking it.  

“Food Facts and Fads”

“The history of every major galactic civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?“ – Douglas Adams

I’ll be teaching a new course this semester “Food Facts and Fads” (#FDSC105). This is a general education course (Health and Physical Activity, GHA) that surveys the food system. It is NOT a nutrition class and I really don’t want to tell anyone what to eat.  I would like to encourage students to think in different ways about the food choices they do make. 

As “Facts and Fads” suggests, part of this course is about how we decide something is true or not which drags us dangerously close to the history and philosophy of science.  One way to interpret the title would be to look at how science has led us out of darkness to the perfectly rational diet we all eat today but that just isn’t true.  People have always believed all sorts of weird things about food.  Science goes some way to resolve the confusion, but usually in complex and incomplete ways.  Interesting ways.

We will take a historical perspective and look at the ways people have fed themselves in the past (Past 1), we then look at the development of the food system that feeds us now looking at specific food groups and commodities (Part 2). In Part 3 we look at how we came to think of food as healthy, nutrition. Remember though, this isn’t trying to teach you nutrition science; we are looking at how people think about food in terms of nutrients.  (This distinction will become clearer when we get there!) Of course, people choose food for lots or reasons other than nutrition and we’ll look at some of those in Part 4.  Part 5 is about trends and fads and how things might taste in the future.

(you can read the course notes here)

Part 1: Snapshots from the history of food – examples of food systems
1. Course introduction. The idea of a biosphere, foraging, the idea of a food system
2. Beginnings of agriculture, peasant farming, lactose tolerance, need for processing (drying, salting, fermenting), resulting social changes

3. Some historic food systems – Food in the Roman Empire and the Han Empire, the Columbian Exchange and the Spice Trade. Industrialization and modernity – development of the Chicago Stockyards
4. When systems fail - Hunger and famine, Sen, Historic famines, Lion’s pantry

Part 2: Where does my food come from?
5. Canned food – Appert, Pasteur, Prescott, home canning
6. Frozen food - The social history of ice, Clarence Birdseye, fish sticks

7. Fresh food in season and out of season – Harner farms, Salads from Mexico, Orange juice from Florida, food waste
8. Cereals – Corn as a commodity, source for ingredients.

9. Meat – processes, welfare issues, Temple Grandin, Penn State Meats lab
10. Dairy – practical challenges of a modern Pa dairy farm and the Penn State Creamery

11. Exam
12. Chocolate – Hershey, global issues

Part 3: Modern ideas of nutrition.
13. Discovery of vitamins, deficiency diseases, going from food to nutrients, supplementation, Vitamania, other micronutrients
14. Macronutrients, the calorie, weight loss and obesity

15. How can we establish a link between food and health? Types of nutritional study and their limitations, Phytochemicals. Government dietary advice – MyPlate vs. Marion Nestle.
16. Other dietary advice – types of diet (and evidence), sugar vs. fat debate, protein for muscle.

17. The story of margarine.

Part 4: Is food “good”?
18. Enjoyment – feasts and comfort food, measuring hedonics, psychological factors, eating disorders, disgust.

19. Law – adulteration, Pure food laws, horsemeat scandal
20. Ethical and religious concerns – some ethical frameworks, “Consider the Lobster”, dog or horse meat consumption, animal rights, Jewish food law (?).

21. Exam
22. Social costs and public health – Euthenics, home economics, alcohol and prohibition, attempt to reduce salt in foods, responses to the obesity crisis.

23. Toxicity – natural toxins, added toxins, the poisons squad, Gwyneth Paltrow, risk and risk perception, caffeine toxicity.
24. Culture –development, Vandana Siva vs. Norman Borlaug, pearl millet processing in Senegal, culinary cultural appropriation, local food (the Penn State Farm), General Tso’s Chicken.  

25. Environment – Organic food, GMOs
26. Microbial food safety

27. THANKSGIVING
28. THANKSGIVING

Part 5: Trends and Fad Diets
29. Early 20th century fads – breatharians, Kellogg’s sanatorium, the great masticator
30. Early 21st century fads –  “Real food”, ”Clean food”, Gluten free, Paleo, bio-hacking

31. How the food industry responds to trends
32. The Future – Space food, insects, vegan meats. Final thoughts

Finals week - Exam 3

“From Prairie to Corn Belt”

The somewhat older country cousin of “Nature’s Metropolis” is Allan Bogue’s “From Prairie to Corn Belt”.  Bogue focusses exclusively on the initiation and development of farming on the Illinois and Iowa prairie in the 19th Century.  In each chapter, he looks at the factors that led people to make the choices they did – questions of land title, capital, labor, technology, availability of crop and livestock breeds, and environment were all vitally important to the few generations that turned unbroken prairie to one of the most productive agricultural landscapes known.  

While Cronon’s story of Chicago bursts with the energy and scale of his subject, Bogue writes with a love of the small details in small communities. Importantly, I get the feeling he respects and likes the people he describes.  While Cronon is a master of the grand, sweeping paragraph that captures the world - Bogue writes lightly with a dry humor.  For example, he describes the challenge of improving the quality of cattle left free to roam on the prairie “Before the herd laws became general, it was difficult to keep blooded females safe from the overtures of bulls that lacked every desirable quality but ambition”. I think I would have liked Allan Bogue.

The two books fit together well because the corn belt developed to feed the transportation hub of Chicago and Chicago developed because of the availability of prairie produce.  While early settlements were near good supplies of timber or river transportation to St. Louis, the later ones developed around the railway leading to Chicago.  As Cronon writes “In this sense, Chicago was just the site of a county fair, albeit the grandest, most spectacular country fair the world has ever seen. The towns and farms that seemed to spring magically into being when railroads appeared in their vicinity were actually responding to the call of that fair. But so was Chicago itself.  Its unprecedented growth in the second half of the nineteenth century was in no small measure the creation of the people in its hinterland, who in sending the fruits of their labor to its markets brought great change to the city and country alike”.

If I was to point where and when the modern “industrial” food system started I’d look at Illinois, city and country, in the second half of the 19th Century.  These two books as a pair offer a good explanation of how that came to be.

Image: Ad from “Prairie Farmer” March 26th 1870.  Horses were faster and more precise than oxen so preferred for mechanization.  Early farmers would have been amazed to “farm sitting down”.

Rewards for Being Wrong

There are many awards in science for research excellence, ranging from the Nobels to “paper of the year” from minor journals.  They serve to honor the best achievements in their fields and offer up inspiration to others as examples of what greatness looks like.  However, I can think of no awards for scientists being wrong and admitting it.

Science offers a powerful set of tools to establish useful truth in the world, but it’s even more important as an organized way of establishing things that are not true and that beliefs are not justified.  Despite this, the human tendency to persist in a belief regardless of the facts is strong. We would do better if scientists saw changing your mind in response to data as a core virtue of their profession.

So, I would like to see awards for scientists changing their mind about something important in the face of changed empirical facts.  These would range from career level awards for scientists who reverse a long-held public position on a substantive issue to “retraction of the year” awards from minor journals.  I’d like to see the recipients receive their awards on a stage and get a plaque to display.  I’d like to see them applauded in journals and held up as examples of what a scientist should be. I’d like promotion and tenure committees to applaud prompt and clear retractions as much as new papers.  I’d like junior scientists to be inspired.

Yes, we should reward achievement in discovery. Science is astonishingly hard.  But we should also recognize the virtues that will make science better overall and applaud them too. I can think of no greater that a capacity to change your mind.

Simplifying the Prairie

One of my favorite history books is “Nature’s Metropolis” by William Cronon. which tells the story of the development of Chicago in the 19th Century as part of the European colonization of the American West. This period and place is important to the emergence of my profession as the concentration of capital and natural resources allowed the expertise of my predecessors to become important.  

I’ve previously used “Nature’s Metropolis” to learn about the development of industrialized meat but in the following section, Cronon elegantly describes how the grain harvest became a commodity in mid-19th Century Chicago: “Wheat and corn came to Chicago from farms that were themselves radical simplifications of the grassland ecosystem. Farm families had destroyed the habitats of dozens of native species to make room for the much smaller bundle of plants that filed the Euroamerican breadbasket. As a result, the vast productive powers of the prairie soil came to concentrate upon a handful of exotic grasses, and the resultant deluge of wheat, corn, and other grains flowed via the railroads into Chicago. And there another simplification occurred.  In their raw physical forms, wheat and corn were difficult substances: bulky to store, hard to handle, difficult to value properly.  Their minute and endless diversity embodied the equal diversity of the prairie landscape and of the families who had tiled to turn that landscape into farms.  An older grain-marketing system had preserved the fine distinctions among these natural and human diversities by maintaining the legal connections between physical grains and its owner.  But as the production of western grain exploded, and as the ability to move it came to depend on capital investments in railroads and elevators, the linkage between a farm’s products and its property rights came to be seen as worse than useless to the grain traders of Chicago.  Moving and trading grain as individual lots was slow, labor-intensive and costly.  By severing physical grain from its ownership rights, one could make it abstract, homogeneous, liquid.  If the chief symbol of the earlier marketing system was the sack whole enclosure drew boundaries around crop and property alike, then the symbol of Chicago’s abandonment of those boundaries was the golden torrent of the elevator chute.”

Image: Grain Elevators and cargo ships on the Chicago River, before 1871.
Photographer: J. Carbutt. Source: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-17111)

“Invisible Science”

Steven Shapin begins his discussion by describing a McDonald’s between Harvard and MIT surrounded by high-tech startup companies spun off from the universities.  He notes that the scientists in the surrounding area seem to prefer to the nearby vegetarian restaurant “styled as a ‘food lab’—founded, appropriately enough, by an MIT materials science and Harvard Business School graduate.”.  He argues that, despite their absence, the McDonalds is an important place of science:

“If no science is going on at the McDonald’s, much of what happens in it has passed through channels carved out by scientific and technological expertise. Any McDonald’s restaurant is a site of embedded science. The products that are its reasons for being have been subjected to extensive scientific and technical inquiry and assay, and whatever products come to be added to them, or to replace them, will be subjected to further inquiry and assay. The electric wiring, the lighting, the heating, the ventilation, the air-conditioning, and the refrigeration systems—all have been designed, tested, and monitored for efficiency and safety by legions of technical experts, as have those of public buildings throughout the city and nation. Standards for the safety of the food, its storage and preparation, are set and monitored by scientifically informed government expertise. The McDonald’s is one of very many late modern “Pasteurian” places, where nineteenth-century “old science” provides a foundation for the latest findings about, for example, strains of bacteria and the toxins they may produce or about the physiological effects of trans fats, sodium, and high-fructose corn syrup. The nutritional content of the food is displayed near the counter and on the company’s website—so many calories, so much fat (saturated and otherwise), so much fiber—the constituents tallied according to the federal government’s ever-changing assessments of the physiological effects of and requirements for different nutrients.”

“While the universities, the start-ups and even the “food lab” are recognized as science by the public and by the historians, and philosophers who study the practice of science, the ubiquitous importance of science in everyday life as embodied in the McDonalds is overlooked. These are “the sort of devices and processes that have already “changed the world,” whose users now take them for granted, whose inner workings are of little interest, and that rarely attract notice as technology—things like refrigerators, kitchen ovens, rifles, shipping containers, bathroom scales, synthetic ammonia fertilizers.”

This is a powerful perspective for me as it describes much of the contributions, good and ill, of my own field of food science.  I’ve used the analogy of drains to talk about good food science – you don’t notice it when it works but you would quickly complain when it doesn’t and I this analogy applies well to other “embedded sciences”.  You could turn the argument round and note that you don’t worry about embedded science enough because you don’t see it.

This categorization would be helpful in thinking about the status enjoyed by scientists in mature fields, calls to replace the current food system, and a blanket rejection of the contributions of food science.

I struggled to follow Shapin’s closing points where (I think) he encourages humanists to engage with the world in scientific terms and to use science to advance their own political viewpoints: “The science of McDonald’s is already opposed by the science of Marion Nestle and the Center for Science in the Public Interest”.  I don’t mean to support McDonalds, Dr. Nestle or CSPI here but it seems to me they are drawing on almost identical science (toxicology, nutrition etc.) while each using it to find empirical data to support their distinct viewpoints. Certainly, a big question like “should I eat at McDonalds or the vegetarian Food Lab” could never be answered in purely scientific terms and humanist perspectives are essential.

Shapin, S. (2016). Invisible Science. The Hedgehog Review, 18(3), 1–9.

(I don’t pretend to be saying anything profound here or adding to Shapin’s thinking. This is just my uneducated reaction, and you can learn far more from reading the original.  My only point posting is by writing something I hope to force myself to read a little more closely and perhaps even remember some of it.  I am grateful to Ben Wurgaft for pointing this paper out to me.)

Science arguments as “String Art”

The word “may” crops up in a lot of science journalism.  Some compound “may” cause or cure cancer; but that is almost never the actual conclusion of the study the journalist is talking about.  Experiments can show that a certain treatment has an effect on a sample and observational studies can demonstrate statistical relationships between observations of a population. In some cases, this might be interesting - we might for example be fascinated to know that a certain enzyme binds one substrate more tightly than another or that populations who report eating more of something get more or less of a certain disease than populations that do not.  This is rarely the case.  What’s really interesting are the implications of the study, and they’re often qualified with the “may”.

If the enzyme does bind that substrate then perhaps this compound is toxic.  If there is that association then maybe banning that food might prevent that disease.  However, while we can frame the question we really care about (is this compound toxic to people? does this food cause this disease?) in a scientific manner, we can never actually answer that question scientifically. They are trans scientific questions

If we suspect that a certain food might cause/cure cancer we might imagine sequestering a population for decades in a controlled feeding trial, but we could never actually perform it.  Instead we build arguments around effects on enzyme kinetics and epidemiological observations.  These are all reasonable approaches to answering the question, but it’s important to make the distinction between what the actual study shows and the argument we want to make from it.

A helpful analogy here is “string art” where the artist taps pins into a board then makes an image by winding thread between them.  The pins are the conclusions of studies, attempts to establish facts about the world.  (Whether they are metaphysically true or not can probably be set aside; better to ask if they are acceptable within the standards we accept for science today). The pins might be placed in the wrong place due to accidental or deliberate bias. A particularly pernicious form of bias is where funding tends to support one sort of study, perhaps of the benefits of a new technology, over others causing the pins to be clumped in one area and absent in others. The pins be more or less firmly anchored depending on the methodological and statistical rigor of the studies they represent.  They might be “safe” studies that either replicate or support existing knowledge, in which case the pins would be placed close to other existing pins, or they might be truly novel and claim a point far from the others.  Together the pins represent the facts that are known about the world that are relevant to the question at hand.  Although, you might reasonably worry about the types of knowledge that constitute “facts” and thus deserve their privileged place on the board.  

The thread is then the argument that is constructed around the available data.  If there are lot of firmly-placed pins in useful places, then the picture will be clearer than if the pins are sparse, but it’s always an indirect process - an inference from available pins.  The studies themselves give useful data from which to build the argument, but the argument will always be an inference and a stronger or weaker one depending on the types of data available.

The thread, the story, is what scientists use to sell their grant proposals and research programs (“if only I had finding to place a pin on this point then we would be able to form a more honest picture”).  It’s also the story journalists tell with the word “may”.  There is nothing wrong with building an argument for action by inferring from data, indeed there is no other real way of using science to solve practical problems, but the pin-art analogy might help reinforce this is a distinct process from the development of scientific data.

The distinction between pins and thread is also helpful when trying to critique a science-based policy or belief.  First, of all the pins themselves are usually scientific statements.  Whether the methodology is inappropriate or if the statistics are unreliable, are questions best suited to people with appropriate technical training.  You can see this discussion within disciplines, for example in the selection of appropriate animal or computational models for toxicology, or between disciplines, for example the crusading role of statisticians in the reproducibility crisis.

On the other hand, how the thread is wound around the pins is more suited to general political discussion and will likely involve discussion of which data is most important and where we lack relevant evidence.  Scientists can be involved in these discussions but we can expect strong elements of political action too.  Indeed, scientists who value a particular type of data will likely be recruited by interest groups and come into conflict with other experts.  Alvin Weinberg suggested a unique and valuable role of scientists in these types of trans-scientific debate is to call attention to the limitations of a particular study. But of course, this requires a remarkable level of modesty, particularly when we are so used to selling our ideas as grant proposals with the “may”.

Image from: Silhouette blog where you will also find great instructions for making your own string art.

Ellen Richards and a Euthenic Argument for Science Communication

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911) was a remarkable woman.  She graduated from MIT in 1873 and went on to found the “Women’s Laboratory” allowing training for women within an all-male institution.  She initially taught geology and chemistry and later became an instructor in “sanitary chemistry” where she was interested in food chemistry.  She was the first female faculty member and is seen as a founder of the field of “home economics” which is foundational to the modern discipline of nutrition. She taught Samuel Prescott who went on to found both the first university program in food science (at MIT) and also the Institute of Food Technologists.

In 1895 she published “Food Materials and their Adulterations” (my copy is the third edition from 1906 – interesting as it came out just after the Pure Food Act), a food chemistry text but one aimed at a general audience and in particularly middle-class housewives. While the content of the book is interesting – lots of practical tests to identify the adulterated foods common to the time - what is perhaps more interesting is the rationale she gives for undertaking this type of science communication.

Ellen Richards believed in euthenics – the application of science to improve people’s lives by improving their environment.  Euthenicists advocated for urban planning, public health, sanitation and lots of fresh air.  It was distinct from eugenics but both ideas fit into the progressive ideals of the day and they were frequently confused.  “Eugenics deals with race improvement through heredity. Euthenics deals with race improvement through environment.  Eugenics is hygiene for the future generations. Euthenics is hygiene for the present generation.” – Richards, “Euthenics, the science of controllable environment”, (1910).

So “Food Materials and their Adulteration’ was euthenics applied to practical food choices at retail.  She argues that while the manufacturers have increased their skills, the consumers have not, and are indeed more distant from food production than previous generations and less able to make wise choices. “The conditions of life have changed here in New England so rapidly and completely, that our young housewives find themselves very much at a loss. The methods of their mothers and grandmothers will no longer answer. They had no trouble with their soap, for they superintended its making and knew its properties. They knew how colored fabrics should be washed, for they had the coloring done under their own eyes. We buy everything, and have no idea of the processes by which the articles are produced, and have no means of knowing beforehand what the quality may be. Relatively, we are in a state of barbarous ignorance, as compared with our grandmothers, about the common articles of daily use.”

Richards lauded the problems industrialization had solved, but was still concerned about managing the costs.  “This is an age of progress. We cannot go back to any example in the past. Educated women must mark out a new plan for themselves. Our girls must be taught to recognize the profession of housekeeping as one of the highest, although not necessarily the only one; but whatever art or accomplishment they may acquire besides, let them consider that the management of a household is not to be neglected. The properly educated housekeeper is not a drudge : she has all the forces of nature at her command, — the lightning harnessed to give her light ; the stored-up energy of past ages at her command by the turning of a stopcock ; swift steamships and railways bring to her fruits and vegetables from all climes; the vast prairies furnish meat, game, and flour; mechanical skill gives her all kinds of labor-saving devices; the general prosperity and improving taste of the country admit of tasteful decoration of the rooms. Surely, never did housekeeping present so many charms. Alas! the winged Pegasus is too strong for his unskilled rider, for in his train has come a style of living both extravagant and demoralizing. “

Richards saw food hygiene and sanitation (fruit exposed to dust, ice dragged across filthy floors) as the biggest food safety concern and looked for laws to protect the consumer.  She saw adulteration and sophistication of food (economic “dilution” or using ingredients to pretend a food is something it isn’t)  as less likely to be a safety issue (for example coal tar dyes in turmeric powder might be dangerous but starch would just be dishonest).  For adulteration and sophistication, she felt the problem was more likely to be moral in nature: “…while there exists adulteration injurious to health, there is a much greater injury to the morals of the community and loss to the pockets of the people. In other words, the point to which public attention should be mainly directed is the question of paying a high price for an inferior article.” She would often frame the “immorality” of sophistication in terms of a reduction in material efficiency and consequent weakening of the country.

Richards believed education is the best way to protect consumers against unscrupulous manufacturers who would otherwise have all expertise on their side (“…while the women have slept, the manufacturer has kept wide awake and has employed the chemist to help him impose upon the ignorant and credulous housekeeper”). Richards preferred solution to the problem was education of the consumer so she could identify adulterated products and bring economic pressure to bear on the retailer to improve.  She was concerned that the education had to come from a reputable independent source and was concerned that food companies and others might exploit the fear of impure foods to drive sales (“…many of the alarming statements, so disquieting to anxious mothers, are inserted in the circulars sown broadcast and in newspaper advertisements by one manufacturer to decry another’s product and to promote the sale of his own.”) and saw it as an important role for government labs and universities, a role she herself pursued.

To me, at least, Ellen Richards is a hero for her pioneering work as a female scientist, as an advocate for science education for women, and for her commitment to the application of current scientific knowledge to solve the practical problems of poor people.  Her books are a fascinating insight into how people worried about food in her time and are historically relevant for the development of home economics, nutrition, and food science.  Today though, I think we can learn something from Richards’ ethical case for science communication. I’m concerned scientists are often encouraged to be “communicators” without stopping to ask why.  Richards offers one possible reason, but one distant enough in time to make it easier to see potential concerns.  I have no criticism on Ellen Richards, she used the best facts available in her time and took more action than most, but was she right to focus on consumer education rather than direct political/legislative action? Was she right to see adulteration as primarily a moral concern? Did she see the right risks and benefits to progress? We might ask similar questions about the actions we advocate for today that flow from our current understanding of scientific facts.