Healthy drinks to beat the summer heat

Food Safety wing plans to INSPECT TEMPORARY SHOPS

Come summer, and a host of temporary shops come up on the roadsides all over the city offering a variety of drinks.

Ranging from ‘sherbat’ to fruit juices, cool drinks and watermelons, these shops offer a range of drinks. With mercury rising, people buy these drinks and fruits in large quantities, looking for a respite from the searing heat. However, the public must exercise a lot of caution as water-borne diseases spread quickly with unsafe and unhygienic handling, says R. Kathiravan, Designated officer of Tamil Nadu Food Safety and Drug Administration Department (Food Safety wing)

While the Food Safety Wing has enumerated around 850 roadside eateries, who always put up shop in the same areas, these vendors offerings juices come up only in summer and are highly mobile, making it difficult to regulate.

They mostly operate using pushcarts and do not stay in one place for long. While many eateries have obtained licences from the Food Safety Wing, the push-carts never do so. As a result, the quality of their products is difficult to ascertain.

Those having registered are subject to frequent checks.

The best way to ensure safety, Dr. Kathiravan says, is to ask the fruit vendors to cut the fruits in their presence and avoiding flavoured drinks that appear to have excess colour.

Further, he says, consumers must also, to the extent possible, drink fruits in disposable cups.

Many of these shops were located beneath trees with no water source nearby. Hence, it was highly suspect if they washed properly the utensils and cups in which the food and drinks were served.

“It is also ideal if people went for things like coconut where it is almost impossible to adulterate or tamper.”

He says the food safety wing is gearing up to conduct inspections in fruit juice outlets to crack down on unhygienic handling of fruits.