ALLAHABAD: The festive season keeps markets buzzing with hectic shopping activity and it's also the biggest time to buy sweets. With a major increase in demand of sweets in the city, there is also a glut of adulterated ingredients that go into their making.
Sweets are prepared in bulk and some times weeks in advance to be sold around Dussehra and Diwali. To cope up with the demand, oil and khoya (reduced dry milk), used for preparing these sweets, is highly adulterated with the poisonous aregemone mexicana and a deadly butter-yellow dye which is added to the oil. A non-edible bi-product of crude palm oil, stearin is used in adulteration of Vanaspati. It is used mostly to manufacture soaps. Khoya is prepared by mashing blotting paper and toilet paper in milk and synthetic khoya is prepared adding urea. "Likewise, semolina is another important ingredient used in making synthetic milk and don't get surprised to know that milkcake, for which you pay around Rs 250 per kilo, often contains no milk at all," said a shopkeeper of the city.
So as a customer how can you really ensure that the peda or burfi you buy is pure? "You can tell generally from the colour or the mava used. Buy only from a reliable shop and understand that cheaper sweets are being made with cheaper products," said Suresh another sweet shop owner of the city.
"We should buy sweets only from reliable places," says a customer. The trick is to purchase sweets from a reputed shop or buy ones that are less colourful. It is also important to keep in mind that the product should be sampled to ensure it isn't made of inferior quality oil or vanaspati.
Normally, it the khoya which is used most and there is a bigger chance of that being adulterated. Refined palm stearin, a non-edible by-product of crude palm oil, is used as an adulterant in vanaspati. Stearin is used largely to manufacture soaps. We should buy khoya and other sweets only from genuine places, says a customer.
As difficult as it is for us to detect something amiss the administration is not taking any chances with a special task force instituted during festivals to keep a tab on quality of milk and sweets. With authorities gearing up to crackdown on mithai shops using stale ingredients, this Diwali, before you bite into that alluring assortment of sweets, make sure it is all fresh. But with the festival just a few days away, those in the business of making quick money are also active in the city and so is the department of food safety and drug administration which has chalked out an elaborate plan for intensifying the crackdown against those in the business of adulteration.
Talking about the department's plan, food safety officer Sailesh Dixit told TOI, "Keeping track of the eight tehsils in the district, we have six sectors each with one food safety officer who would be responsible for keeping a tab on adulteration. Any complaint related to quality of food would be taken action against. Any trader found resorting to such means of adulterations would be taken to task as the department has enhanced its vigilance in view of the festive season. Check is not only against milk products...we are vigil against any sort of adulteration be it in food items or spices."
Adulteration is not new to officials and now even common people are getting more aware as what he was couple of years ago, said head of the department of Gastroentrology MLN Medical College, Prof Manisha Dwivedi. Metanil yellow dye which is another non-permissible toxic colorant, is used mostly to color besan (gram flour), pulses, miscellaneous prepared foods including sweetmeats like laddoo, barfi, jalebi, dalmoth, papad, etc. for an attractive deep yellow color, informed Prof Jagdamba Singh of the department of Chemistry, Allahabad University.
Food grade colors are available in the market but since they are costly, traders take advantage of the lackadaisical approach of the law enforcing authorities and substitute it with cheap and non-permissible dyes and colors, he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment