The use of certain artificial colors have been banned under the Food Safety and Standards Act of 2006, because long-term consumption could increase risk of cancer and tumours in the body.
COIMBATORE: The Food Safety Department will embark on a drive to crackdown on restaurants and eateries who use artificial food colouring agents in the food they serve, while eateries found violating the law would be fined heavily.
The use of certain artificial colors have been banned under the Food Safety and Standards Act of 2006, because long-term consumption could increase risk of cancer and tumours in the body.
The random inspections will take place in all restaurants and eateries across the district from Monday and is likely to go on for almost 10 days. The move comes in the wake of the department receiving many complaints from the public that artificial food colours continue to be used by restaurants in many food items. "Some have complained that the use of colour was so high that the colour residue was remain on their hands," said designated food safety officer, Dr R Kathiravan.
Officials said a majority of complaints regarding use of food colors centred around dishes like Indian chilli chicken, tandoori chicken, chilli gobi, layer biryani and a few North Indian gravies.
" They use a lot of red, orange, yellow and green colours in their food to make it look a lot more appealing, despite us giving them clear instructions on it being banned," said Dr Kathiravan. "We have suggested use of natural colors like turmeric for yellow, saffron for orange and Andhra Chilli and beetroot extracts for red," he said.
However, eateries continue to synethic colours which contain chemicals like erythrosine, carmoisine, ponceau 4R, indigo carmine, brilliant blue FCF, fast green FCF, Tartrazine and sunset yellow FCF. "These colours are approved by the government, but studies have shown that chronic or daily consumption of these colours make them carcinogenic," said Dr Kathiravan. The residues of these colours take almost a month to leave our body, he said.
However, confusion regarding use of colours in food items continues because their use in some desserts like chocolate, ice cream, jelly, candies and Indian sweets are permitted. "These food items come under the category of once in a while consumed foods and thus use of colours is permitted up to the level of 100 parts per million, while normal starters and main course come under day-to-day consumed food," he said.
There is also the issue of a few small and medium sized eateries crossing the permissible levels of colour in Indian sweets or even using banned colours like auramine (yellow), malachite green and rhodamine (pink).
"We have not found such cases yet, but we will keep a look out for them," said another food safety officer.
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