[Adulteration of food and luxuries and the origins of uniform state food legislation in Germany].

During the last two decades, there has been an increasing movement in Germany to protect the natural environment from dangerous substances. This has renewed a growing common interest in government food control. This contribution ask the question of how this food legislation as a part of the general food and health policy in Germany came into being, and which promoting as well as inhibiting determinants in this scope could be observed. These statements are based partly on results of a project of the German National Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) in which the author investigates the change of food habits under the impact of industrialization and urbanization since the last century in a larger historical perspective and in a quantitative and qualitative manner with the help of current sources.