Institute of Management,

Nirma University

MBA (Full-Time) 2019-2021

Business Ethics
Individual Assignment on “Adulteration in Food”
Submitted to
Prof. Trilok Sharma
on
3rd September 2019

Submitted by:-
Sakshi Tibrewala (191149)
 Table of Contents

Sr No. Particulars Page No.

1 Introduction 3

2 Types of Food Adulteraton 4

3 Top 5 Foods targeted for Adulteration 6

4 Health risks of Adulterated food 7

5 Appetite Suppressants in Weight-loss-friendly 8

foods
6 Advertising and Promotion of Food Supplements 10

7 Conclusion 11

8 References 12

2
Introduction

Adulteration in food has been a concern since the beginning of civilization, as it not only
decreases the quality of food products but also results in a number of ill effects on health.
Authentic testing of food and adulterant detection of various food products is required for
value assessment and to assure consumer protection against fraudulent activities. Through
this review we intend to compile different types of adulterations made in different food
items, the health risks imposed by these adulterants and detection methods available for
them. Worries about sanitation and guideline have guaranteed the advancement of
different methods like physical, biochemical/immunological and sub-atomic strategies, for
adulterant location in nourishment. Atomic strategies are increasingly best with regards to
discovery of natural adulterants in nourishment, albeit physical and biochemical methods
are ideal for identification of different adulterants in sustenance.

Food is the basic necessity of life. Synonyms like admixture and substitution helps to define
the word adulteration. Food adulteration can be defined as lowering the quality of food by
intentional or unintentional substitution of food with some inferior foreign particle or by
removal of some value added food substitute from main food item. Food Safety and
Standards Act of India (FSSA) defined “adulterant” as any material which is or could be
employed for making the food unsafe or sub-standard or mis-branded or containing
extraneous matter”. According to Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), the primary
food safety law administered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), food can be
declared adulterated if:

a) a substance is added which is injurious to health

b) cheaper or inferior quality item added to food

c) any valuable constituent is extracted from main food article

d) quality of food is below the standards

e) any substance has been added to increase bulk or weight

f) to make it appear more valuable

Adulterated food is dangerous as: a) it may be toxic and effect health; b} it could deprive

nutrients required to maintain proper health, c) it may cause intoxication or problems such
as allergy in sensitized individuals.

3
Types of Food Adulteration

Food adulteration involves the infusion of useless, harmful, unnecessary substances to food
which decreases the quality of food. Table 1 shows certain examples of different types of
food adulterations. Adulterants in food can be categorized into following categories:

1. Intentional adulteration is the inclusion of inferior substances having properties

similar to the foods in which they are added. They are thus difficult to detect. The
adulterant could be physical or biological in nature. Some examples of intentional
adulteration include addition of water to liquid milk, extraneous matter to ground
spices, or the removal or substitution of milk solids from the natural product etc.

2. Unintentional adulteration is inclusion of unwanted substances due to ignorance,

carelessness or lack of proper facilities and hygiene during processing of food. This
can be of acquired type like contamination of foods by bacteria or fungi, spoilage of
food by rodents, entry of dust and stones, harmful residues from packing material,
etc. or inherent adulteration e.g. presence of certain chemicals, organic compounds
or radicals naturally occurring in foods like toxic varieties of pulses, mushrooms,
green and other vegetables, fish and sea foods. In India, the Prevention of Food
Adulteration Rules, 1955 (now covered under FSS act) sighted crop contaminant as
another category of unintentional adulterant which gets added to articles of food in
the process of their production (including operations carried out in crop husbandry,
animal husbandry and veterinary medicine), manufacture, processing, preparation,
treatment, packing, packaging, transport or holding of articles of such foods as a
result of environmental contamination.

3. Metallic contamination is the intentional or unintentional inclusion of different

types of metals and metal compounds in food. Out of all, lead, arsenic, mercury and
cadmium are considered most toxic as their intake is highly chronic. If they
accumulate in the body they can cause organ damage.

4. Microbial contamination is the spoilage of food due to infusion of different microbes

through various sources. Foods may be contaminated by microorganisms at any time
from several sources during food processing like during harvest, storage, processing,
distribution, handling, or preparation.

4
5
Top 5 Foods targeted for Adulteration

Milk: For the situation of milk, numerous people will in general center around melamine as
the "notice com pound" for milk debasement. While melamine is a high perceivability
target, it is being observed and episodic data demonstrates that it is currently being
supplanted by urea and even amino acids since they are increasingly hard to distinguish.
Notwithstanding melamine, soy protein, corn syrup, whey, calfskin, and even cleanser have
been accounted for as potential adulterants in milk. At the point when calfskin is added to
drain, it very well may be hydrolyzed to improve its dissolvability.

Olive Oil: The tainting of olive oil with different oils including corn, sunflower, safflower, and
sesame requires nonstop testing to check it is unadulterated olive oil with both polyphenols
and triglycerides utilized as marker mixes. Moreover, olive oil contains a higher convergence
of oleic corrosive than different oils, yet less linoleic and linolenic.

Honey: The third sustenance on the main five rundown from Chemical and Engineering
News was nectar. The weakening of nectar with more affordable materials, for example,
corn syrup, has been around for a considerable length of time. The underlying work on this
theme was finished by White of the United States Department of Agriculture utilizing atomic
attractive reverberation (NMR) spectroscopy, yet as innovation advanced there have been
various HPLC applications to screen this marvel.

Saffron and other spices: Because of its cost, saffron is fourth on the rundown (as per
Chemical and Engineering News), however other writing is by all accounts progressively
comprehensive by showing that flavors, as a rule, are focuses for corruption. Luxurious
Digest showed seven flavors of concern: cayenne pepper, cumin, coriander, pepper, saffron,
turmeric, and salt. Deceitful providers can corrupt cayenne pepper with sawdust and hues,
cumin with sawdust, turmeric with sawdust and yellow hues, and saffron with corn silk.

Meat and Fish: In China where corrupted meat was blended with new meat and gave to
clueless associations including KFC and McDonald's. In 2013 in Europe, it was resolved that
horsemeat was blended with meat. Also, there is a great deal of information demonstrating
that a huge level of fish is mislabelled, prompting a less expensive fish being sold as an
increasingly costly one. An ongoing report found that fish tests bought at markets, cafés,
and sushi bars in real urban communities were regularly mislabelled.

6
Health Risks of Adulterated food

Food adulteration contributes the society with many diseases ranging from mild to
lifethreatening conditions like vision problem, liver problem, skin diseases, and several
stomach disorders such as diarrhea. Widely and commonly seen examples are asthma, skin
diseases and cancer caused due to intake of fish, fruits, meat or milk adulterated with
chemicals like formalin. Human health is highly sensitive to food adulteration and
sometimes shows immediate side effects like diarrhea, dysentery and vomiting. For
example, coffee powder substituted with date seed powder or tamarind can cause diarrhea
(Lakshmi, 2012). Adulteration of cream filled foods, bakery items and dairy products can
also cause abdominal cramps and vomiting. Improperly processed milk and canned meat
may cause food poisoning and abdominal pain or other food infections usually with fever
and chills. In addition to immediate effects there may be many long term adverse effects of
adulterated food. Long term effects like colon, peptic ulcers, liver diseases like cirrhosis and
liver failure, heart diseases, blood disorder, bone marrow abnormality and kidney damage
have been observed due to adulterants like colouring dyes, calcium carbide, urea, burnt
engine oil and sometimes even due to excess amount of permitted preservatives.

7
Appetite Suppressants in Weight-loss-friendly foods

Appetite suppressants like phenylpropanols, biguanides and diethylpropion act by

modulating the reuptake of serotonin and dopamine leading to the inhibition of the feeding
center and/or stimulation of the satiety center in the ventromedial hypothalamus.
Prolonged use of these appetite suppressants may cause drug dependence and other side
effects, such as cardiac valve damages and pulmonary hypertension. While the use of some
of these pharmacologic agents is banned or restricted in the EU, Japan and the US, they are
being used illegally by some food producers in China to satisfy the consumer demand for
weight loss, body shaping and sports health. Not only dietary supplements and sexual
stimulants, many other products of traditional herbal medicines were reported to be
adulterated with various types of hidden synthetic chemicals having different
pharmacological activities. Different studies reported the presence of glucocorticoids, non-
steroidal anti-hypertensive agents and so many other types of therapeutic synthetic agents
as adulterants in the preparations of herbal medicines that are sold as 100% pure, naturally
originated and free from side-effects.

For the most part, the generation and quality confirmation of homegrown drugs are not
carefully controlled as done if there should be an occurrence of Allopathic prescriptions and
great assembling rehearses (GMPs) are not carefully connected in its assembling procedure.
Furthermore, natural and customary medications may contain numerous pharmacologically
dynamic synthetic substances from various pieces of a few plants. Hence, it is exceptionally
hard to screen what number of synthetic concoctions are available in a readiness if the
makers are unscrupulous. In this way, there is an earnest requirement for compelling and
dependable techniques for the identification of illicit corruption of weight reduction well
disposed (WLF) nourishments with hunger suppressants.

Each example was exposed to ultrasonic extraction with methanol, cleansing, inclination
elution, and range examination. The outcomes demonstrate that, there was a decent
straight connection between the mass grouping of every part and the trademark particle
reaction force for the 12 suppressants. Subsequently, the WLF sustenances sold in physical
or online shops may have been corrupted with craving suppressants. To ensure the strength
of buyers, the wellbeing of WLF sustenances must be checked all the more intently.

Taking everything into account, it is suggested that the dietary enhancements ought to be
under exacting controlled of the medication administrative specialist of the nation where
those items have no controlling office. The nature of those items ought to be observed

8
routinely by the medication controlling expert and should make compelling strides and
activities against the lawbreakers. The patients and general individuals ought to likewise
know about the conceivable defilement and unwavering quality of the item before utilizing
it. Each client ought to counsel with a doctor before utilizing any medicament and even a
dietary enhancement. Home grown prescriptions or conventional meds or elective drugs
and dietary enhancements obviously have a positive job in the treatment and alleviation of
maladies and have long magnificent achievement history. No compelling reason to embed
engineered synthetic concoctions for assuming its job. The producers and advertisers are
mentioned to abstain such sort of awful practice for human wellbeing and to not to
demolish the brilliance of home grown or correlative drugs.

9
Advertising and Promotion of Food Supplements

Nourishment enhancements are showcased "in portion" structure, for instance, as pills,
tablets, containers or fluids in estimated dosages. Enhancements might be utilized to
address dietary inadequacies or keep up a satisfactory admission of specific supplements.
Tainting (substance and microbiological) is an issue, related, for instance, with natural items
from Asia. Instances of death in Europe and the USA by expending items sullied with
overwhelming metals, engineered drugs and other unfortunate substances are accounted
for. Utilization of substances with a healthful or physiological impact other than nutrients
and minerals in sustenance enhancements is allowed, for which is required foundation of
explicit principles for further harmonization, as ULs, and which have a place with one of the
accompanying classifications: amino acids, compounds, pre-and probiotics, basic
unsaturated fats, botanicals and plant separates and random substances.

One critical component for sustenance enhancements is the fringe with drugs. It exists in
setting of various national conventions and works on concerning the translation, showcase,
guidelines, control and usage. On the off chance that the expected utilization of the item is
restorative, for example including restorative activity, consequences for infections and
changes in physiological procedures, at that point therapeutic enactment will apply to check
wellbeing and viability in connection to the expected use. On the off chance that the
proposed use is wellbeing advancing, for example including capacity upgrading properties,
impacts on wellbeing and the best possible working of ordinary physiological procedures,
showed through the creation of a wellbeing guarantee, at that point the sustenance lawful
structure will apply.

Advertising of items by organizations ought to be as per the present nation's guideline for
the particular item classification. It is vital for the producer to recognize the classification of
their item according to the fixings and use. This will coordinate the mode and method for
advancing the item. The utilization must be indicated or inferred according to the promotion
and must not be deceiving.

10
Conclusion

Since food adulteration is a huge concern in all parts of the globe, there is voluminous
literature on various aspects of food adulteration including its detection. In fact,
methodological procedures of food adulteration detection have been reviewed extensively.
Many of the methods for detection of food adulteration require elaborate steps of sample
preparation prior analysis involving high-end technologies and that makes the whole
process difficult to perform and time consuming.

The need of the hour is to develop composite in silico tools and computer-vision systems
with minimal analytical technology for rapid, nondestructive, highly efficient, and economic
food-adulteration detection maneuvers that may be used in the field/at point of use by less
trained personnel to generate data with significant reproducibility

11
References

• “Impact of regulation on advertising and promotion of traditional herbal medicines

and food supplements” Marjan Dzeparoski, Suzana Trajkovic-Jolevska, International
Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing
• “A Novel Detection Method for Appetite Suppressants Illegally Added into Weight-
Loss-Friendly Foods”, Tingting Sun, Fei Han, Yunhui Xu and Yanhong Xu, CURRENT
TOPICS IN NUTRACEUTICAL RESEARCH Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 254–259, 2019
• “When Bad Things Happen to Good Food: Applications of HPLC to Detect Food
Adulteration”, W. Jeffrey Hurst, Kendra Pfeifer, and Ronald E. Majors, Column
Watch Editor, November 2014
• Bansal, Sangita & Singh, Apoorva & Mangal, Manisha & K Mangal, Anupam & Kumar,
Sanjiv. (2015). Food Adulteration: Sources, Health Risks and Detection Methods.
Critical reviews in food science and nutrition. 57. 10.1080/10408398.2014.967834.
• Sarker, Dr. Md. Moklesur Rahman. (2014). Adulteration of herbal medicines and
dietary supplements with undeclared synthetic drugs: Dangerous for human health.
International Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. 6. 1-2.

12