Detect food adulteration from the comfort of your kitchen

Worried about food adulteration? Simple kitchen-based tests can help detect impurities in milk, oil, honey, and more. With guidance from FSSAI’s DART booklet, consumers can safeguard their health without lab support by using easy home techniques to spot adulterants

Hyderabad: If you are losing sleep all the time about adulteration in common food items, there is no need to knock on the doors of a sophisticated laboratory. All one needs to check for adulteration of common ingredients that we consume on a daily basis can be found in the heart of our homes, the kitchen.

Yes, from the comfort of your kitchen and using simple techniques, you can ascertain whether the milk and its allied products, oils, food grains, salt and even fruits and vegetables that you bought from the local market are laced with adulterants.

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As instances of food adulteration rise, putting the health of the consumers at risk, food regulatory authorities in collaboration with food quality laboratories and domain experts have prepared simple ‘home-made’ techniques, covering more than 50 tests. These simple tests empower consumers to check for adulteration right from their kitchens.

Milk adulteration:

While milk is a staple in every household, there are multiple forms of its adulteration, including adding water, starch and even detergent.

Did you know that when you mix equal amounts of water and milk and shake the contents thoroughly, a dense lather is formed on top, indicating that it is laced with detergent?

If you add 2 to 3 drops of tincture of iodine to a small amount of milk sample, then the formation of blue colour is an indicator of starch. You can add the same tincture of iodine to boiled ghee/butter after it cools, then the formation of blue colour indicates that starch in the form of mashed potato, sweet potato, etc has been added.

Detect purity of coconut oil:

To detect when other oils are added to coconut oil, take a sample in a transparent glass and place it in a refrigerator for 30 minutes. Pure coconut oil will solidify, but other oils remain as a separate layer.

A neurotoxin that impacts brain function, TOCP (Tri-Ortho-Cresyl-Phosphate), is sometimes added to oils and fats. You can easily detect TOCP by adding a little amount of yellow solid butter to the oil sample; the formation of red colour indicates presence of TOCP.

Concerned about the sugar solution added to honey to your recently purchased honey?

All you need to do is take a transparent glass of water and add a drop of honey. Pure honey will not disperse in water; if a drop of honey disperses in water, it indicates the presence of added sugar.

For simpler tricks to detect adulteration, refer to the DART booklet from FSSAI.