How to Check Turmeric Adulteration at Home, as per FSSAI

Adulteration of natural food products is one of the major challenges in today’s world. It becomes very difficult to find out whether the fresh, green vegetables that you just bought from the market are adulterated or not as the difference between real and adulterated blurs.

Reasons for Food Adulteration:

In spite of various regulations and penalties, the practice of adding adulterants is quite common in developing countries. For example, Turmeric is a yellow-colored spice with numerous health benefits, including anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic. In a study, the presence of a toxic bright yellow lead-containing compound called Lead Chromate was found as an adulterant in turmeric.

Below are the major reasons for adulterating food  products:

• Practiced as a part of the business strategy to fetch a better price.

• Lack of knowledge of proper food consumption.

• An imitation of some other food substance.

• To raise the quantity of food production and sales.

• To get maximum profit from food items by lesser investments.

• Increased food demand for a rapidly growing population.

Easy Steps to Check Turmeric Adulteration at Home:

Adulterated food is much more harmful than oily and deep-fried food. Realizing the importance of the health of citizens, FSSAI has taken an initiative on Twitter, which is called #DetectingFoodAdulterants

In this awareness series, once a week, they share an easy trick that you can also try to detect whether your food is adulterated or not. A few days ago, they have shared tricks on how to check Green Vegetable Adulteration.

Now we'll learn about how to detect artificial color adulteration in turmeric powder. Follow these 4 easy steps to check how good your turmeric powder is:

• Just take a glass of water        

• Add a little quantity of turmeric powder to the water.

• The unadulterated sample turns light yellow and then turmeric settles down at the bottom of the glass

• The color of the solution with adulterated turmeric changes into strong yellow.