Beware of eating sweets on this Diwali

12 November, 2012

Usually sweets add up to the festivity, but their huge demand has given way to adulterated sweets to enter into the market. These spurious sweets can lead to many short-term and long-term health problems.

AS THE Diwali season arrives, sweet shops are filled with customers and orders for the festival. But the adulterated sweets have come to haunt the city, which can cause problems like blood pressure, gastroenteritis and problems related to digestive system. If these adulterated sweets are consumed for longer time then they can even damage the liver and kidney.

A consumer protection department official told The Times of India, “Avoid 'milk cake' and 'Doda barfi' at any cost before Diwali.” He said that many of the local halwais use expired milk powders, textile whiteners, sulphurous acid and glucose to make milk cakes. And in the similar manner they even sell the fermented and spurious unsold sweets from various sweet shops and mix them with chemicals and other substances and prepare Doda barfi.

The team of food and consumer protection department is frequently raiding the sweet shops in the city. And they found the conditions where the sweets are being prepared are terribly unhygienic. They also tested the products used by them to prepare the sweets and found that the chemicals and liquid sugar being used by them were certainly not edible.

Khoya, which is used as a major ingredient in a variety of sweets is also being adulterated by mixing low quality oil, maida and chemicals like urea, sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, etc. Asish Kumar Singh, OSD, Bihar food and consumer protection department said that buyers should not trust even the big sweet shops, because they do not prepare sweets on their own; they buy them from some fixed suppliers at low rate and sell them at a higher price.

Most of the sweet shops use sub-standard products during the festive season to draw huge profits and leave the customers at the mercy of vulnerable ailments. To avoid all this here are some tips for the customers to check whether the product is adulterated or not. If you want to buy khoya or any other milk product, then take a small piece of it on your palm and rub it; if it is not adultered then it should leave oil. Similarly, to check the quality of the silver foil, rub it on your palm and if it sticks to your palm then it is not silver, it is aluminum.