Do It Yourself – How to Detect Food Adulteration

Food is one of the basic necessities of life. Food adulteration is the process of adding or combining unwanted, poor quality, harmful, unnecessary substances to the food with similar colour and texture for making profits. Food adulteration is a serious threat to consumers, and its impact ranges from relatively harmless to fatal.

Here is a list of some tests you can do today at home.

Common adulterants:

• Refrigerate coconut oil for 30 minutes. Coconut oil freezes; any other adulterant will remain on top as a separate layer.
• Put a drop of milk on a slanting surface. Pure milk either stays or flows slowly leaving a trail behind. Adulterated milk will flow immediately without leaving a mark.
  
  
• Move a magnet through your flour, tea powder to check for iron fillings.
  
  
• When burned in a small spoon, asafoetida burns like camphor, if adulterated it will not produce a bright flame.
  
  
• In a glass of water add few drops of honey. Pure honey will not disperse in water, if the drops of honey disperse in water, it indicates the presence of added sugar.
  
  
• Add some amount of black pepper to a glass of water, pure black pepper settles at the bottom. In adulterated black pepper, papaya seeds float on the surface of the water.
  
  
• Rub a small amount of cumin seeds on palms. If palms turn black, adulteration is indicated.
  
  
• Put a teaspoon of chili powder in a glass full of water. If the water changes color to red and earthy then the chili powder is adulterated.
  
  
• Fake noodles are made with rotten grain and poisonous additives. Sometimes they are even made up of plastic.
  
  
• Take a blade and scratch the surface of the apple. Wax comes out if wax polishing has been done.
  
  
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