AN age-old proverb asserts: “To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”
Consuming nutritious and wholesome food is a basic necessity to ensure a health living translatingto “good food leads to a good mood”.
Because of rapid modernisation and changing lifestyles, we see today significant changes in eating habits and diet the world over. In most countries, traditional and healthy food consumption has been taken over by junk food consumption culture. Sadly, this change happens irrespective of gender, age, religion or region.
Positive and negative effects
Of late, technological innovations in the agro-food industry sector have not only imparted a positive impact on consumers by giving several healthy food choice options but has also brought along a wide array of negative effects.
Few decades back, “food adulteration” was not common but nowadays, “fake foods” are becoming more frequent.
Some examples of food adulteration encountered previously include: partial substitution of olive oil with tea tree oil or much cheaper sunflower oil or peanut oil, coating fresh or dried fruits with toxic food colours, addition of soil particles or small stones to increase the bulk weight of raw cereal grains or their flour, using “metanil yellow” to colour rice or wheat flour to mimic as turmeric powder, adding melamine in infant milk formula, mixing dried papaya seed with black pepper seeds, addition of water to fresh cow milk, mixing coffee powder with sawdust or roasted corn, adulteration of honey (marketed as pure and high quality) by addition of corn or fructose syrup, and this list goes on.
Most of these examples cited are more or less categorised as “food adulterants” which are intentionally added to a food commodity, mainly for monetary gains by a company, a manufacturer or a small-scale trader.
Fake foods
Now, imagine a person going to a cafeteria, restaurant or supermarket and orders or buys food which is a “fake one”, and the person never realises this even after eating!
Yes, in the present day situation, majority of the popular and extensively used foodstuff are being faked! These faked foods can be health hazardous as well as can lead to serious irreversible health conditions in consumers.
There are several reported incidences the world over on food frauds or fake food scandals (majority of foodstuff being chemically synthesised in laboratories). One of the foremost incidences is the use of human hair (hair-generated amino acid syrups) to produce soy sauces.
Today, these types of faked soy sauce are readily available in the international markets and it is highly impossible for a consumer to differentiate with the naturally produced soy sauce (from soybeans).
Plastic rice
The other emerging scandal is the openly marketed “faked rice” or “plastic rice”. Plastic rice cannot be easily identified by a consumer as they are packed or mixed along with popular branded rice varieties.
For production of plastic rice, usually potato or sweet potato starch is mixed with synthetic resin (plastic) to mimic natural rice grains, and is produced using certain sophisticated food processing instruments.
On investigation of plastic rice, traces of polyvinyl chloride, benzylbutylphthalate, 2-ethylhexyl phthalate and di-isononyl phthalate were detected.
Available reports have indicated plastic rice to have been extensively marketed in some of the Southeast Asian and North African countries who all had imported rice from other growing regions.
Most of the time, these faked rice are either sticky or remain very hard after cooking. Technically it is highly challenging to identify faked plastic rice. However, there are some crude unscientific methods being suggested.
If a person doesn’t know whether the rice is real of fake, they can try immersing one spoon of raw rice in water for few minutes and check for the floats; or burn small amount of rice and check for the burnt plastic smell; or keep a watch whether the cooked rice spoils (with off-odour) within few hours of cooking. There might not be any apparent health effects on consuming plastic rice immediately, but long-term consumption can lead to hormonal changes, kidney failure and liver cancer.
Faked eggs
Further, there is incidence of chemically synthesised fake chicken eggs being marketed openly in many countries. In this type, the egg shell is crafted by using calcium carbonate, while the yolk and white portions are prepared by using water, calcium chloride, sodium alginate, starch or gelatin, small portion of real egg yolk powder, and food colouring.
So, how to identify a fake egg?
Simple steps can be adopted to look for unusual “easy and readily” mixable portions of egg white and yolk portion, or by examining for the off-odour (as fake eggs have “meaty” smell), or while frying check whether the yolk portion readily spreads without being touched. Previously, fake eggs were a serious issue in several Asian countries. Regular consumption of fake egg is related to dementia and memory loss.
Moreover, there are the cropping issues of faked green peas extensively produced using toxic green dye and sodium metabisulfite on dried soybeans or wild edible peas.
If in doubt, then on soaking in water for extended time (3-4 hours), the green dye can be seen separated from the fake peas. Alternatively, there might also be a long cooking time too for faked green peas.
Online viewing
The list of faked vegetables is vast with freely marketed fake cabbage, lettuce, spinach, etc. Just as an example, faked cabbage preparation can be viewed on YouTube! Also, one thing to note is that this type of faked foods does not have any nutritional value and are highly health hazardous. The chemicals used for preparation of these are capable of inducing cancer and can create hormonal imbalance.
Additionally, there are reports available from some of Asian countries where butter is produced using soybean oil or coconut oil blended with diacetyl compounds (to attain butter flavour) and beta-carotene (for golden colour) rather than using cow or buffalo milk. Also on the list is the faked instant milk powder, produced using dustless chalk powder, which had led to serious health issues in children, mainly that of “big head disease”.
There are reports on producing faked “whipped cream” formulated using a mixture of water, coconut oil, corn syrup, skim milk, artificial flavours, guar gum, etc. Reports on food fraud scandal relevant to marketing of artificial noodles (use of carcinogenic industrial ink and paraffin wax), marketing of health hazardous industrial salt (which can cause hypothyroidism and reproductive system disorders) as iodised salt, and walnuts filled with cement were also on rise in one of the Asian countries.
At the moment, in a lot of countries around the world, there are plenty of faked seasoning agents, dry spices and spice powder, cheese, fruit juices, fake beef, green tea, etc which are marketed openly and thus rendering it to be highly impossible for a consumer to identify.
Limited knowledge
In almost all the instances, consumers remain unaware of the faked foods because of limited knowledge.
In the near future, it is expected that misuse of technological innovations and thirst for making quick money among certain group of food producers or traders can lead to many more faked foods being produced and marketed throughout the world. It is envisaged that much more cases of fake food scandals can arise in the coming days.
Owing to serious health effects caused by these types of faked foods, it is always advisable that consumers discard a food product if in doubt or contact the producers directly for authentication of the raw materials or products being marketed.
English divine Frederick William Robertson (February 3, 1816-August 15, 1853) once said: “In this world, there are three things that deserve no mercy and they are the hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny” and in the present day scenario this holds true for food frauds too.
Finally, in a blessed country like Fiji Islands, the best option for a consumer is to support local farming communities and small-holders, and buy the much reliable local produce.
* Dr Rajeev Bhat is an associate professor and head of the Food Science Department under the College of Engineering, Science and Technology (CEST) of the Fiji National University (FNU). The views expressed are his and not of this newspaper. For queries, Dr Bhat can be contacted on either hodfs@fnu.ac.fj or rajeev.bhat@fnu.ac.fj.
