Food Adulteration: Introduction, Reasons, Types, Methods, Prevention

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What is Food Adulteration?

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What is Adulterant?

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Reasons for Food Adulteration

• It mimics a more well-known food and improves the dish's aesthetic appeal.
• Food adulteration is frequently committed by people unaware of the dangers involved. It is still extensively used because of a lack of awareness and sufficient understanding.
• Food adulteration adds weight, increases revenue, and facilitates cheaper sales.
• The population growth rate is another essential factor in food adulteration.
• The ineffectiveness of government efforts to prevent it.

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Types of Food Adulteration

• Intentional adulteration: When ingredients that resemble the food's components are added to the product to make it heavier and more profitable. An example is mixing pebbles, stones, marbles, sand, muck, filth, chalk powder, contaminated water, etc.
• Incidental adulteration: When food is handled carelessly, adulteration can happen accidentally. For example, rat droppings, larvae growth, or pesticide residues in grains
• Metallic adulteration : This term refers to putting metallic substances, such as lead or mercury, into food. It could take place accidentally or even inadvertently.
• Packaging Risk: The food's components may interact and mix with the packaging materials used to package it, posing packaging risks.

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Methods of Food Adulteration

• Mixing: Sand, dust, clay, mud, and pebbles are mixed with food particles during the mixing process.
• Substitution: Some beneficial ingredients are swapped out for less expensive, inferior ones, which changes the food's nutritional value and may pose a health risk.
• Using Decomposed Food: This strategy recommends combining decomposed food with nutritious foods. Food is considered contaminated if it even tries to conceal damage or any deficit. Additionally, the final product is contaminated when healthy foods are purposefully combined with foods of dubious quality.
• Additions of Poisonous Substances: Another method of food adulteration is the blending of food with toxic substances to boost sales and profit. For instance, adding dyes, colours, or dangerous unapproved preservatives.
• Misbranding: Changing the production and expiration dates, the ingredient list, or the deceptive derivatives of an ingredient, etc.
• Artificial ripening: Chemicals added to fruits and vegetables to hasten the ripening process are also seen as adulterating food. Mangoes are one fruit that uses carbide to ripen to balance economic supply and demand.

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Health Hazards of Food Adulteration

• Mineral oil when mixed with dietary oils and fats, has been linked to cancer.
• Spices like turmeric powder can contain lead chromate, resulting in anaemia, paralysis, brain damage, and miscarriages.
• Lead poisoning, foot drop, sleeplessness, constipation, anaemia, and mental retardation are all risks associated with the lead contamination of water and natural and processed food.
• Cobalt added to water, and alcoholic beverages can harm the heart. Moreover, colic, vomiting, and diarrhoea can be brought on by copper, tin, and zinc.
• Mercury can cause brain damage, paralysis, and death when present in fish, cereals treated with mercury-containing fungicides or other sources.
• Beyond the acceptable limit, coloured foods can cause allergies, hyperactivity, liver damage, infertility, anaemia, cancer, and congenital disabilities. Permissible food colours like metal yellow and other colours that are not prohibited can also cause these problems.

How to Detect Food Adulteration

Milk and Milk Products

• Checking the fluidity of a milk sample on a polished, slanting surface for the presence of water, which leaves a white trail in unadulterated milk.
• When milk and water are shaken, lather forms, indicating the presence of detergent.
• Starch can be detected by boiling a sample of milk product with water and adding iodine; the presence of starch is indicated by the product becoming blue.

Oil and fats

• If coconut oil separates into a layer after being chilled for 30 minutes, it has been tampered with; nevertheless, if it solidifies, it is natural coconut oil.
• When a small amount of yellow butter is added to an oil sample, the presence of tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate is immediately detected by the appearance of red colour (TOCP).

Sugar and confectionery

• If honey dispenses after being dropped into water, sugar has been added.
• Take a sample of sugar; if you add chalk, the sample will sink to the bottom of the transparent glass of water.

Food grains and their products

• Visual detection of extraneous material, khesari dal, excess bran, and dhatura can be accomplished by thorough inspection following their appearance.
• Water must be added to cereal grains before they lose colour.
• To make crimson rice, mix a teaspoon of rice with lime that has been soaked.

Salt, spices and condiments

• Burn asafoetida on a stainless steel spoon; unadulterated asafoetida burns like camphor and vice versa. Because papaya seeds float on water, they are contaminated. Pour a glass of water with black pepper in it.
• With a finger, press a blackberry; light ones will break easily.
• Pour a glass of water with some turmeric powder in it. Natural turmeric powder will gradually turn yellow, whereas adulterated turmeric powder will turn bright yellow.
• Slice a potato, sprinkle salt on it, wait and then squeeze lemon juice over it. Iodised salt displays a blue colour, whereas regular salt does not.

Fruits and Vegetables

• When malachite green is present, cotton that has been soaked in water and applied to the outside of plants turns green.
• Put a cotton ball in the water, rub the outside of the sweet potato, and if the cotton picks up colour, use rhodamine B to colour the outside.

Beverages

• Coffee powder contaminated with clay or chicory will sink to the bottom when users add it to water.
• Move a magnet over a small number of tea leaves in a glass plate; iron fillings will be visible; this will reveal the presence of adulteration.

Beverages

• When synthetic milk is tampered with, it has an unpleasant aftertaste and feels soapy when rubbed.
• Mineral oil-coated black pepper has a kerosene-like aroma.
• Sugar will smell like ammonia when rubbed against the palm; urea is present.
• Chapatis' natural flavour is sweetish, whereas those tampered with are bland (tasteless).

How to Prevent Food Adulteration

• Food adulteration can only be controlled at the industrial level through tight and harsh rules, government interventions and checks.
• Always be cautious to avoid consuming contaminated food by avoiding buying deep or dark-coloured goods.
• Put an end to eating processed food.
• Before eating, thoroughly wash or soak your fruits and vegetables in water.
• Check any canned or tinned foods for leaks or puffing before purchase.
• The government licence number for food safety in Indian marketplaces is FSSAI. Therefore, always check the food packaging for the FSSAI, an ingredient list, a manufacturing date, and an expiration date.

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