Food Adulteration

Adulteration in food has been a priority since the start of civilization because it does not only decrease the standard of food products but also leads to a variety of ill effects on health. Food fraud is a term that includes the cause of motivation of the incident. Food adulteration is an act of adding or mixing of poor quality, inferior, harmful, useless, or unnecessary substances to foods. This act of spoiling the character and quality of food items is taken into account food adulteration.
Adulteration in food has been a priority since the start of civilization because it not only decreases the standard of food products but also leads to a variety of ill effects on health. Proper testing of food and adulterant detection of varied food products is required for value assessment and to assure consumer protection against fraud activities. With the help of this assessment, we can compile different types of adulterations made in different types of food items, the health risks imposed by these adulterants, and detection methods available for them. Concerns about food safety and regulation have ensured the event of varied techniques like physical, biochemical, and molecular techniques. When it involves the detection of biological adulterants in food the most preferable method is Molecular methods, although physical and biochemical techniques are used for the detection of other adulterants in food. The food adulteration risks are being considered across the food protection spectrum including food quality, food safety, food fraud, and food defense. Any foodstuff that's a public health threat is assessed because of the effect of adulteration though there could also be many various sorts of causes or motivations. To stay before the growing scope, scale, and threat, new countermeasure approaches are being developed to more efficiently and effectively detect and deter.
In India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is responsible for providing safe food to the citizens. In 1954, the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act has laid down guidelines to provide pure and wholesome foods to consumers. The Act was last amended in 1986 to make punishments more stringent and to empower consumers further. But recently, the government is planning to enforce harsher punishment.

By-  Janvi Aggarwal