Beware, you’re not served what you have asked for

A recently-published study of the National Institute of Nutrition highlights risky practices among street food vendors.

If street food is an irresistible indulgence, choose with care where your palate is treated, warns a recently-published study from the National Institute of Nutrition.

The institute in the past has pointed out through several studies the risk of eating street food, including serious bacterial contamination, but in its recent study has listed risky practices among street food handlers. These practices were determined after examining 463 samples of food collected from across the city, and the way they were handled from storage to serving.

Accordingly, testing for food-borne pathogens revealed that most of the carrots used in the samples and over three-quarters of onion — two commonly-used vegetables — were contaminated with the bacteria escherichia coli. The bacteria, known to be a part of the human gut flora, are expelled in faecal matter. Though not all, some types of E.coli can cause serious illnesses.

The study was published in the British Food Journal.

The study is part of the institute’s larger efforts to improve food safety standards in the city. Partnering with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and civil society organisations, researchers at the institute have developed a training module based on the findings. A few vendors have also been trained. The training suggestions are low-cost measures to get more vendors to adopt them.

Among the common high-risk practices examined in the study, which have been addressed in the training module, researchers found that pani puri vendors, who did not wash their hands with soap, had higher risk of contaminating the delicacy with fecal coliforms like E.coli. In all, about 150 samples of pani puri were analysed.

Researchers also estimated that leaving peeled or cut fruits and vegetables uncovered, made them 13 times riskier to consume than ingredients well stored.

Besides street food, studies in the past have also assessed quality of ice creams sold by pushcart vendors.

A study published last year by food and nutrition researchers of Osmania University found that about a third of samples tested were contaminated due to poor hygienic conditions at point of preparation and subsequent inadequacies in handling.