Enjoy!

I think the English were just better at recording it.

https://victorianweb.org/science/health/health1.html

https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-fight-against-food-adulteration/2020253.article

Here is one in Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esing_Bakery_incident

France passed a food adulteration law in 1905. Many countries were cracking down on it around this time along with the US with the Pure Food and Drug Act under Teddy Roosevelt.

Examples of food adulteration in France in the 1800s:

https://review.gale.com/2020/01/08/wine-adulteration-in-the-nineteenth-century/

Copper-colored vegetables: French beans, cucumbers, and samphires were often colored green with copper. This could have fatal consequences.

Beer: Brewers added substances like copperas, quassia, liquorice juice, and Nux vomica to make beer bitter.

Wine: The wine industry was affected by the Phylloxera epidemic, which destroyed a large proportion of vines. In response, wine adulteration increased.

Confectionery: Arsenic and mercury compounds were used as colorants.

Mustard: Lead chromate was added to mustard.

Meat: Animal health became a concern as meat consumption increased.

Go read about how horribly adulterated food was in Europe and the US in the 1800s and before. They’d add sawdust to flour, chalk, toxic metals, rotten meat was sold regularly, etc. Patent medicines were essentially drug trafficking or just scams. Soldiers in the Spanish-American war were supplied with canned meat from the US Civil War. I saw an old film from the time the Pure Food and Drug act was passed showing a can of meat being opened and it literally shot out from the gasses inside.