You could be at risk of consuming adulterated food
Food adulteration is easy money for traders, but slow poisoning, disease or even death for consumers. How can we detect whether what we eat is safe? Geeta Padmanabhan finds out from experts
Call it “shaam ke side effects”. Binging on crisp vadais at the office party got us all down with stomach cramps, retching and diarrhoea. Food poisoning, we agreed. Used oil, we speculated, relieved our innards were still with us after the night-long purging. We also discovered: Lab tests in mice at Weill Cornell Medical College revealed a toxin made by Clostridium perfringens caused Multiple Sclerosis (MS)-like damage in the brain. Earlier work by the same team, published in PLoS ONE, had identified the toxin-producing strain of C. perfringens in a young woman with MS — a neurological condition affecting 40,000-50,000 people in India.
“We may be eating dangerous dye, sawdust, soap, stone, industrial starch or aluminium foil along with food,” said Assistant Professor of Chemistry Leena Singh, who has done research in adulteration. Adulteration is easy money for traders and slow poisoning, disease or death for consumers. What we eat can be unsafe, unhygienic or harmful when nutritious elements in them are killed. “An easy example of food adulteration is vanaspati in desi ghee.” Adulterants when used in illicit drugs are called cutting agents, deliberate addition of toxic adulterants to food or other products for human consumption is known as poisoning. These adulterants are often highly carcinogenic and when consumed over a continuous period of time can stunt growth and cause serious ailments.
Contamination at every stage
From growth to gourmet table, all areas are open to poisoning. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides contaminate food, bacteria and parasites travelling through wind and water settle snugly in the soil to foul the food grown. Whether in a large factory or in our kitchen, if we aren't scrupulously clean, food processing can be a major source of cross-contamination — specially through natural bacteria in the intestines of animals. Food stored incorrectly — uncooked piece of meat kept next to a bunch of grapes — can transfer bacteria and other contaminants from one food item to another. During preparation, a person with flu or gastroenteritis can pass on germs, a chopping board used for unwashed meat and then for vegetables can be a vehicle for contamination. Unwashed hands, dirty kitchen spaces, cockroaches and mice are all contamination carriers.
Adulteration is a form of cheating, Dr. Leena argues. But how do we judge the quality/purity of food items we buy? Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has developed quick tests for some adulterants in food, which help consumers screen food particles, she said. It is a long list, but you could try some of them. Add 5 ml of solvent ether to 5 ml of honey, shake it well, and decant it in a petri dish. When the ether evaporates, add 2-3 ml resorcinol. See a cherry red colour? It's sugar/jaggery, honey! Sprinkle a teaspoonful of ground spices in a cup of water. Powdered bran, smelly dung or sawdust will float on the surface. Turmeric powder is too bright? It's metanil yellow if a violet colour persists when concentrated hydrochloric acid (HCl) is added to it. Put pepper corns into a beaker containing carbon tetra-chloride. Papaya seeds float to the top, pepper settles down.
Accredited labs
You could also try one of the accredited food testing labs in Chennai, Kochi, Bengaluru or Hyderabad. Check out: (http://www.fssai.gov.in/Portals/0/Pdf/NABL_accred_ted_food_testing%2828-11-2011%29.pdf). “We are a dedicated lab for food testing as per requirements of FSSAI,” says Ashok Kumar, Chennai Testing Laboratory (22501757). “We use high-end instruments like GCMS and Flame photometer to assess purity, and adulterants are discovered through chemical tests. We have approved standard procedures to test food.” The lab is equipped to test dairy products, cooked food, spices, edible oils, powdered spices, tea powders, wheat grains, maida and rice, he says.
But then, prevention is better than cure, so make sure you buy food products that are not only unadulterated but also “ecologically ethical”, says Leena. They should be ethically made/sourced and traded without a negative impact on environment or humanity, should not have been tested on animals and must be organic, sustainable, natural, fair-trade products. Support grocery stores that go for minimal packaging. Stay firmly away from packaged, ready-to-eat or partially-cooked food items. Adulteration is almost impossible to detect or remove from these.
Buy packed items of well-known companies, buy stuff at reliable retail shops and recognised outlets, check the ISI mark or Agmark, FSSAI, buy products in air-tight containers, resist the craze for artificially-coloured sweets and buy only from reputed shops, says Ashok Kumar. “Do not buy sweets or snacks kept in the open; avoid buying things from street-side vendors.” Saying no to the boiled peanut mix on Elliot's beach, then?
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