It is easy to adulterate oils and fats. But it is difficult to detect such adulteration. Ghee is often mixed with hydrogenated oils and animal fats. Synthetic colours and flavours are added to other fats to make them appear like ghee.
3. Food Grain Adulteration:
Food grain adulteration involves mixing sand or crushed stones to increase the weight of food grains. Cereal grains and pulses are mixed with plastic beads that resemble grains in colour and size. Very often, water is also sprayed on grains to increase the weight.
Adulteration is a fatal crime against society. We have a law against adulteration but like other social laws, it is rarely enforced. The responsible officers and politicians do not take any action against social fatal evil until it takes the form of a big tragedy and becomes the heading of newspapers. Same is the case with Adulteration. In short, government wakes up only when Adulteration results in fatal tragedy. "We have no business to make laws when we have no intention to enforce them=- the prevention of Food Adulteration Act and others."
4.Other Adulterations:
Chilli powder is often mixed with brick powder, while tea leaves are often mixed with used tea leaves.These adulterations are very harmful to the consumer and they should be addressed by consumer organizations and consumers seriously.
Watch what you eat!!!
Nowadays in India, it is very hard to find a food product that is not adulterated. Adulteration is done by antisocial persons who want to make easy money. They mix low quality, cheap, non-edible substances with food and make it adulterated. The cheap, low quality and generally non-edible substances which are purposely mixed with food items to earn profit are called adulterants. The addition of adulterant may be intentional or accidental. But generally the adulterant addition is intentional. The major reason for the intentional addition of these adulterants is for increasing the profit margin on the expense of the health of the public or consumer. Food adulteration has become a new problem in the country. People do not bother what they are having as foods even they know that it may cause them much harm. Some adulterants enter via agricultural steps, as they are not cleaned well. These are visible adulterants like stones, leaves, soil, sand and dust to name a few. The consumer can clean them and this makes it less harmful. Other adulterants that are intentionally added are invisible or they are made invisible by astutely camouflaging with the colour or texture.
They are generally harmful for the health and most of them lead to serious health problems like cancer. However,
there are hardly any food items from fish to meat, vegetables to milk; biscuits to juice that are not adulterated in one way or another. The varieties of adulteration that are popular in India are:
1. Milk Adulteration:
In India, which is the land of cows, large quantities of milk are adulterated. Milk adulteration involves adding water to milk and removing the beneficial fats from milk. Often soya milk, starch, groundnut milk, and wheat flour are added to milk. This makes the milk less nutritious and it results in milk being useless for the consumer.
