It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. Let's cook dinner together. Just you and me.

We've bought only the best food. Organic, pesticide-free, no preservatives, no additives. Now imagine

doing all of this, but in the 19th century. It's like a carnival of adulteration.

There's no government standards for anything.

This is science writer Deborah Blum.

There was an insane amount of food fraud in the late 19th century.

We had just opened up this candy box of new industrial chemicals, formaldehyde, sodium

benzate, borax.

Borax is the stuff that I used to scrub out my sink or to, you know, put on the counter

to keep the ants away.

You're saying people put that in food intentionally.

Yes.

There was no food safety, no regulation.

Really, it's kind of amazing anyone survived.

I actually kind of loved the Borax story because they discovered these huge mining opportunities with Borax out in California, and they discovered that it also had some antiseptic qualities, right?

It was antimicrobial.

And it doesn't taste that bad, which is one of the things that's really important.

They put it in butter going to England.

You actually had them saying,

oh, the British loved the taste of borax in their butter, right?

It was a very, this is a wonderful thing,

and everything tastes better with borax.

...