Profiteers pushing Pakistan on verge of nutritional crisis

LAHORE: Pakistan is on the verge of a nutritional crisis at the hands of those profiteers, who are unscrupulously involved in large-scale food adulteration, wreaking long-term havoc on the lives and economies of unwitting consumers, experts said on Saturday. 

“Dishonest producers use cheap fillers that are easily disguised in the spices/ingredients to increase the volume sold thereby cutting the cost of pure materials, and thereby increasing their ultimate profit margin on top of adding to the medical bills of consumers,” a researcher said speaking at a seminar on food adulteration. 

The same speaker pointed out that consumers may be eating a dangerous dye, sawdust, soap stone, industrial starch, and aluminum foil and even horse-dung.

“The poorer segments of society are more likely to consume food tainted with brick dust, soap ingredients, textile dyes etc,” the speaker said. 

Another expert explained that a food item was considered adulterated if it contained any added “poisonous or deleterious substance”, filth or unapproved food or color additives.

“It is also considered adulterated if any valuable constituent has been omitted or removed or substituted with another substance,” the expert said.

Also, he added, if any substance has been added to increase bulk or weight to conceal the inferiority of an item then it is also adulterated. 

A food safety expert informed the seminar that some of the common adulterated foods are milk and milk products, wheat flour, edible oils, cereals, condiments (whole and ground), pulses, coffee, tea, confectionary, baking powder, nonalcoholic beverages, vinegar, chickpea powder, and curry powder.

“Alum and chalk are sometimes used to whiten the bread, while for stale flour, ammonium carbonate is added to disguise its sour taste,” the expert said.

He continued that mashed potatoes, sawdust and plaster of Paris were also used to increase the weight of the bread, while milk is adulterated with water, and indirectly by removing the cream.

“Cream is adulterated with gelatin and formaldehyde is employed as a preservative for it and butter is adulterated to an enormous extent with oleomargarine, a product of beef fat,” he added.

One of the speakers disclosed that coal-tar colors were also employed to adulterate food to a great deal.

“Pickles and canned vegetables are sometimes colored green with copper salts, butter is made yellower by a certain substance, while turmeric is used in mustard and some cereal preparations,” the speaker said.

An industry official divulged that in confectionery, dangerous colors, such as chrome yellow, Prussian blue, copper and arsenic compounds are employed, whereas artificial flavoring compounds are utilised in the concoction of fruit syrups, especially those used for soda water.

“Pure butter oil and ghee are also very rare in the market.

Dishonest traders use a host of ingredients -- animal fat, palm oil, potato smash, and vegetable oil -- to make fake butter oil,” the speaker added. 

He added that they even mix stearin oil, an ingredient of soap, with ghee to increase the proportion.

“The red chili powder used in the market is also adulterated. In most cases, the spices are mixed with brick dust.

Fine sawdust is also often mixed with cumin and other ground spices,” he said.

The experts were unanimous that this crisis-like situation calls for tougher monitoring to screen all food products for safety. 

Saying that it was the only way towards a healthier nation,  they also urged the health regulatory agencies to take fail-proof measures to crack down on the food adulteration in all its forms along with other such malpractices by legislating strict guidelines and laws.