Diwali is approaching - beware of adultrated Sweets!

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Sweets with bright pink, green, yellow colour look attractive and

fascinate the public but the colours used in such sweets are mostly

harmful for human consumption. These cheap artificial colourings used

in many food items such as rasgulla, ladoo, jalebi, burfi, chum-chum,

karachi halwa and many more can be deceiving and send one straight to

a doctor, according to Dr Rupa Bakhshi, Professor, Department of

Family Resource Management, PAU.

 

Toxic colourings are being used because these are easily available,

comparatively cheap and above all look attractive and fascinate buyers

especially children.

 

But they could be carcinogenic. Toxic effects of these colours may

include diseases like paralysis, brain damage, vomiting, diarrhoea,

giddiness, food poisoning etc, she warned.

 

Many times valuable components are removed from the food and

prohibited items are added to it for making money. Customers need to

be extra careful during the festival season as the demand for sweets

increases at festival time and consumer could easily be cheated, she

cautioned.

 

To make matters worse, the poor hygienic conditions in which most of

the sweets are mass-manufactured to cater to the Diwali demand, could

take a toll on the consumers health. Consumer is not only cheated of

his money's worth but adulterants are a big health hazard, she adds.

 

Recently, use of refined oil was detected in the ''only pure ghee''

graded sweets being openly sold in the market, says Dr M Sidhu,

Associate Professor in the College of Home Science.

 

http://news.oneindia.in/2007/11/08/colourful-sweets-mostly-health-hazard-pau-exp\

erts-warn-1194498138.html