Today the Quincy Market is a major tourist attraction and hosts eclectic retail offerings from Coach, Godiva and Victoria’s Secret to Harley-Davidson and the Museum of Fine Arts. Year-round, it pulses with a sprawling diversity of energy and commerce. In that respect, it remains unchanged – in most other ways, the Quincy Market of William’s era was a different world.

In the 1820s, Boston’s population began to swell, as the city absorbed the first wave of European immigration. From around 40,000 souls in 1820, the population exploded to over four times that number, 170,000, by 1860, a year before the William G. Bell Co. was established. In this era, Irish immigrants were the most abundant – as many as 35,000 had clambered ashore by 1850. By the waning years of the 19th century, as the family business approached its 40th anniversary, the city’s burgeoning population has surged past half a million. By then, its crammed neighborhoods – North, West, and South ends – reverberated with the faces, language, food, clothing and religions of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, Poles and Russians, many of whom sought work and opportunity on the docks and in the markets.

The Quincy Market of 1857, the year William arrived in the service of Seth Burt, proprietor, was a cacophony of sensory stimulation. Imagine the racket of barking vendors, wagon wheels on cobbled stones, livestock. Or the odor of fish, meat, and manure mingled with the aroma of fresh bread, fruits and spices. Or the sight of coal fires and steam in the cold, ships masts, and the motley blending of vest-suited business men, stevedores, and butchers.

Two-hundred year-old cobble stones were blanketed in an accretion of hay, dirt, discarded produce, and the ubiquitous pigeon droppings. Vendors opened stalls in the dull twilight between dark and gaslamp. Rough-hewn stalls spilled open to display every kind of durable and non-durable goods that could be purchased, grown, or caught around the world and hauled off the docks a stones throw east. Cats, dogs, chickens, goats, mice, and pigeons, everywhere pigeons.

The markets formed a robust ballast for the splaying arms of docks that stretched east into Boston Harbor. The grandest of them, Long Wharf, not 100 feet from the eastern-most stalls, reached a quarter mile toward the sea and beckoned seafaring vessels to bring their goods to port.

The strip of cobblestones between dock and market formed the foot of Commercial Street, which curved to the northeast, hugged the harbor shoreline and formed a broad shoulder that supported the wharfs above Long Wharf – Commercial, Lewis, Union, Lincoln, Battery and more. Commercial Street continued on, as it does to this day, to enclose the top of the North End at the base of the colonial graveyard and Snow Hill. It hemmed in a neighborhood of narrow streets, ancient clapboard houses, including Paul Revere’s, the Old North Church, and cramped, red brick tenements that spilled their occupants to the very edge of the market district.

This geography would form the daily world of William from his arrival in the employ of Mr. Burt in 1857 until the week of his death in 1915.

• First, characterization validates camu-camu’s exceptional vitamin C content – more than 20 times that of oranges)
• Second, broad-spectrum antioxidant testing using Brunswick Labs’ next generation Total ORAC – superb performance against all 5 radicals
• Third, significant performance in a quartet of cell-based efficacy tests – oxidation, inflammation, general aging, and UVA/UVB

This protocol exemplifies the kind of continuity – from harvest to health benefit – that we can now expect to see from premier natural products. And what it shows is the powerful therapeutic effects that ethnobotanists have long proclaimed and new commercial tests confirm!

Stay tuned for more exciting news about “The Year of AntiAGEnts.”

Time for an update! The valuable info given by Ginny (who is very knowledgeable) is based on the original ORAC – which remains in wide use. However, there’s a new star on the block…Total ORAC.

Total ORAC expands upon the original ORAC patent and adds performance analysis against 4 more primary reactive species (commonly called radicals). This panel gives a picture of comprehensive broad-spectrum antioxidant capacity.

The results are quite remarkable. We can now see how a substance – whether compound or finished food product – performs individually against 5 different radicals. Some have impressive balanced performance, while others are specialists. Total ORAC brings a whole new dimension to antioxidant testing

What’s more, we advise clients to use Total ORAC in tandem with a comprehensive offering of proprietary pre-clinical efficacy tests. These tests use time-honored research tools, like cell line methods, to investigate cellular protection against oxidative stress, inflammation, glycation and other important harmful mechanisms.

We have seen significant correlations between Total ORAC results and cell line outcomes in standardized compounds, extracts, and even premium food products.

So, ask us about how to step into the next generation of ORAC testing.

All summer we have witnessed the awkward shuffling of the economy, uncertain of which way to go. Well, for health enthusiasts there is a bright spot. The race is still on for better nutritional products – from the search for novel superfruits to the development of powerful new botanical drugs. From our vantage point, a growing number of companies are ramping up their efforts to bring new and improved nutritional products and services to market.

Here’s a snapshot:

A botanical pioneer pursues new equatorial superfruit! We are Total ORAC experts and have advised many companies on using advanced testing programs to differentiate products. We’ve seen a lot of superfruits float under the bridge. This one takes the prize, with Total ORAC values significantly higher than acai. Next, we will be investigating its efficacy at the cellular level.

A South American agricultural concern has received significant investment backing to develop superfruit cultivation and processing to meet increasing global demand. We will be advising on a comprehensive science program to showcase product performance and on U.S. market channels.

A premier U.S. CRO has developed new analytical methods that advance efficacy testing for food and nutrition products. These unique methods make it possible to investigate the effects of food products on critical areas of human health, such as inflammation, oxidation, and glycation using pre-clinical, cell-based tools. We are working with the lab to market these new offerings.

A specialty U.S. contract manufacturer of consumer nutritional and skin care products has launched a new non-profit company to support cancer patients and their families. We are working with the company to design world class new products based on the latest developments in novel botanical ingredients.

A premium nutritional products growth company wants to leverage the remarkable Total ORAC results on its broad-spectrum antioxidant product line. We are working with the company to add value through concise, accurate and compelling product messaging.

Stay tuned and let us know if you need creative assistance with your nutritional product strategy.

News Alert!

Time sensitive. We have access to supplies of premium Chilean maqui freeze-dried powder (FDP) at cost-plus pricing for a limited time only. This FDP is produced mostly from Region 10 maqui in Patagonia.

In 1857, eighteen-year-old William began an entrepreneurial career by selling fireworks for the 4th of July in Lowell, Mass. Four years later, he founded The William G. Bell Company, renowned to this day for Bell’s Seasoning.

He created and marketed premium nutrition products, scouring the globe for precious ingredients like Jamaican ginger, Zanzibar clove, Batavian cinnamon, and Dalmatian sage.

His genius lay in savory combinations that enhanced the cuisines of the finest establishments of the day. His clients were Harvard College, The Grand Central Hotel in New York City, The Piedmont Hotel in Atlanta, the Lenox Hotel in Boston, the Hotel Titchfield in Jamaica, and the Algonquin in Maine.

At Bell Ventures, we are proud to continue the legacy of William G. Bell by applying imagination and energy to innovation in nutrition.