HYDERABAD: Festival season is here and sweet shops are making a killing as business is brisk. Motichoor laddus, pedas and kalakhands are flying off the shelf. But, watch out before you gobble down one of those sweets. Did you know that the above mentioned are among the most adulterated sweets? Telangana State Food Laboratory gets most adultery complaints on those sweets.
The laboratory conducted tests and found that some of the shops or makers were mixing maida into these sweets instead of making them with pure kova as they claim. Some were even using aluminium foil to decorate the sweet instead of silver foil. Colouring was also added more than permitted levels to make the sweets look more appetising. These additives, experts say, can leave you sick.
“Most of the people who bring sweet samples to us for tests are those who experience reactions such as vomiting, or diarrhoea after eating them. They want to know if the food products are adulterated,” a junior scientist at the laboratory said. Interestingly, while most people doubts the quality of milk used in preparation of sweets, analysts said they have not got complaints on that aspect.
Scientists at the food laboratory said that though mixing maida in sweets, which are supposed to be made out of kova, does not pose a grave danger to health, but quality of sweets comes down.
Experts say there are quite a few simple tests one can do at home to check the quality of sweets.
While the samples are tested at the Food Laboratory to know the quality, scientists there suggested a simple home-based test: when iodised salt is added to a piece of sweet dropped in water, if water turns blue it indicates presence of maida. In the run up to the festival of lights, confectioneries are often covered with an ultra thin shiny silver layer.
Junior scientist at the Food Safety Laboratory, G Laxmi Narayana Reddy said that they did detect some sweets covered with foils made out of aluminum. And the junior scientist suggests a simple hack to test what are people consuming.
“While the silver foil breaks and cannot be scrapped out of sweets, if it is a aluminum foil over the sweets, it can be scrapped out as a layer and it can be rolled into a small ball,” Narayana Reddy said.
Another food analyst at the laboratory said, “While it is easy to conduct quality tests if a bottle of ghee or adulterated ghee are available, it is difficult to find if ghee or oils are used in sweets.” If people hold any doubts about the food they are eating, they can submit samples at the Food Laboratory by paying nominal fee of around Rs 200.