Beware if you are buying food this Diwali!

NPNEWS24 ONLINE-  This is the week of India’s biggest festival and everyone is busy in its celebration by  purchasing new items right from clothes to various kinds of delicious food products.

But, how conscious are you in considering the quality of food that you are buying? Sometimes customers buy foods at cheap rates by compromising with its quality. So, the question is that is it at the cost of your health?

So, what is food adulteration? Food adulteration means addition of inferior substances to increase quantity or  lowering the quality of food. It usually refers to mixing of unhealthy substances and sometimes harmful quality of food  and drinks. It not just includes the addition or substitution but also biological and chemical contamination  during the period of growth, storage, processing, transport and distribution of the products.

It is everyone’s right to get safe and good-quality food for good health. In festive season, there are many places where unhealthy food is being made and served every single day. In many stores, the processed food which is totally adulterate including fruits are also injected from biochemical uses which can lead to serious health issues such as heart burn (due to the acid reflux), food poisoning, Diarrhoea and so on. That’s why it is very important to create awareness among people about this issue.

Why is food being adulterated?

As it is the week of festival, the process of buying and selling depends on the supply and demand ratio. And at the time of such festivals, the demand of products increase at a very high rate which imbalances the supply chain. At such situation, sellers want to fulfil the demands of the customers anyhow, but they forget their duties and start increasing the quantity of the products by mixing other materials in it. They do such kind of illegal things just for the sake of earning more money by forgetting all their ethical responsibilities.

What precautions you should take?

If we consider the population of our country, it is not possible to inspect food quality every time as the demand of these products is huge. Despite there are many laws regarding customers’ safety but still food adulteration becomes a challenging issue for government as it is very easy to adulterate foods like milk products.

Hence it is very important for every individual to fight against such issues which directly plays with the customer’s health. As per the government’s moto ‘Jago Grahak Jago’ it is everyone’s right and duty to know about what they are buying/ purchasing. Customers should not give chance to sellers to sell mixed foods just for saving few rupees.

• Make sure that you are buying only those products which has standard labels like Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). It was  established under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. It is an autonomous body and which was established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.

• Do check expiration date of the products.

• Never go for cheap rate food by compromising it’s quality.

• Zero tolerance- If you are having the droughts about the quality of the food products that you are buying, go for registering complaint against the concerned seller without any hesitation, otherwise you are motivating them for doing such things again and again by neglecting it.