Food adulteration: Why awareness is important | The Times of India

In the entire food supply chain, from production, packaging, preservation, and distribution, food can become adulterated at any point. Adulteration in food can have serious negative effects on health. Food products often contain toxic adulterants that can lead to either immediate or chronic disorders.

For example, the most common forms of food adulteration include the addition of synthetic colours to fruits and vegetables, and in this regard, the most long-established form of food adulteration that usually goes backstage is the dilution of pure milk with unhygienic water, intoxicating the most basic wholesome food.

Obviously, it doesn’t stop there: grains with dust and stones; sugar with chalk powder; edible oils with mineral oil; turmeric powder with industrial dyes. Adulteration of ghee, which is currently the most common type and has a significant negative impact on public health, is a serious problem. It can be attributed to either the fact that its price has increased and is now twice as expensive as other edible oils or to the fact that demand has grown in response to a shortage. Ghee’s analytical constants have a very wide range, which allows for a substantial amount of adulteration. After a cheap vegetable oil was imported and mislabeled as ghee by congealing it and taking other processing steps to make it resemble ghee, the threat has grown over the past several years. Farmers, in particular, and the dairy industry as a whole would not be able to compete if the same thing continues to happen. As a result of this, instead of being an income-generating profession, keeping cattle will become a luxury. Vegetable ghee cannot be a replacement for real ghee from a health standpoint, according to medical professionals. Therefore, it is past due for a well-organised public initiative to stop the adulteration of ghee. (Image: istock)