Health Hazards with Adulterated Spices: Save the “Onion Tears”

Abstract

Review Article IRJPH (2019) 3:38 Health Hazards with Adulterated Spices: Save the "Onion Tears" Spices are among the top five most commonly adulterated food types because they are expensive commodities that are processed prior to sale, used most frequently and consumed by mass population. There is a strong incentive to pollute. In Bangladesh, different types of grounded spices powders are available like onion, ginger, coriander, chilli, turmeric, cumin, etc. These powdered spices are commercially processed and packaged by some leading food industries, while some local non-branded industries also exist. Nowadays, people are busy with their carriers, the demand of branded spices powder is increasing gradually. Generally, most of the people tend to buy loose spices from the local grocery store if branded and packaged spices are not available. This increases the risk of consuming adulterated spices. Unlike this particular adulterant which is not unhealthy (but illegal), most of the adulterants are unhealthy and can cause serious and fatal damage to our system if consumed regularly. The escalating market of this product implies that in Bangladesh this tradition is increasingly attaining momentum. Spices are consumed in various forms such as whole spices, ground spices, oleoresins, extracts etc. Spices play an important role in enhancing the flavor and taste of processed foods. They are also used in medicine because of their carminative stimulating and digestive properties. Ground spices maybe adulterated with artificial colors, starch, chalk powder, etc. to increase their weight and enhance appearance. High value ground spices are frequently adulterated for economic gains. Adulteration is difficult to identify by visual and sensory inputs alone. Although there are few renowned food industries, peoples are always suspicious about these products. But there are still not enough investigations for the quality check of all these branded powdered products.

Relationships between amylopectin internal molecular structure and physicochemical properties of starch

“…Advances in Adulterants Identification Techniques in Spices 27 (Dhanya & Sasikumar, 2010;Lakshmi, 2012) Foreign berries, fruits seeds and artificial pepper (Tremlová, 2001) Buckwheat and millet (Galvin-King et al, 2019) Chili powder (Parvathy et al, 2014) Chili Sudan I, III and IV (Rani et al, 2015;Tarantelli, 2017) Orange G (Sebaei et al, 2019) Talc powder, brick powder, almond shell dust and tomato wastes. (Dhanya & Sasikumar, 2010) Cumin Sudan I and IV (Sebaei et al, 2019) Peanut, almond, and Brazil nut (Bennett, 2015;Garber et al, 2016) Garlic Chili and wheat (M. Zhang et al, 2019) Maltodextrin (Jessica Moore, 2020) Talcum powder and chalk (Sherman, 2017) Corn starch (Osman et al, 2019) Onion Wheat (M. Zhang et al, 2019) Corn starch (Mohiuddin, 2019) Paprika Sudan I and IV, Orange II and Acid Black I (Tarantelli, 2017) Orange G (Sebaei et al, 2019) Saffron Turmeric, paprika and calendula (Dhanya & Sasikumar, 2010) Magenta III and rhodamine B (Bhooma et al, 2020) Curcuma longa, Crocus vernus stigmas, Carthamus tinctorius and Calendula officinalis (Torelli et al, 2014) Turmeric Sudan I, II, III and IV, metanil yellow and Orange II (Rani et al, 2015;Sahu et al, 2020;Tarantelli, 2017) Corn, wheat, and chili (M. Zhang et al, 2019) Chalk powder and saw dust (Dhanya & Sasikumar, 2010) C. Zedoaria, cassava, barley, and rye (Parvathy et al, 2015) 28 Desarrollo de un modelo de identificación de adulterantes para control de calidad en ajo en polvo…”

The Application of NMR Spectroscopy and Chemometrics in Authentication of Spices

“…Due to the change of our lifestyles and raising awareness on the influence of food on our health, foodomics has become one of the most studied research field. People think that unhealthy food including worse quality and adulterated spices may be responsible for different types of disease such as cancer, high blood pressure, intestinal problem, and allergy [ 20 , 63 ]. Food metabolomics includes not only the evaluation of the molecular composition of food, which is very complex because it consists of hundreds or even thousands of compounds, but also it is focused on the interactions between food ingredients and studies the impact of food storage, transportation, and processing on its composition.…”

“…Apart from colorants, spices may be adulterated by addition of foreign matter with similar properties. The most frequently used adulterants are starch (e.g., maize, wheat, potato and rice) in turmeric, chili and curry powder, brick dust, sand, saw dust, and stone powder in chili powder, chalk powder in turmeric spices and dung powder, and common salt in coriander powder [ 10 , 20 , 21 ]. Moreover, tomato skin and brick powder were used for adulteration of paprika powder, while papaya seeds are convenient for adulterating pepper [ 10 , 22 ].…”

Detection of saffron adulteration with Crocus sativus style using NIR-hyperspectral imaging and chemometrics

“…Unfortunately, saffron is frequently subject to adulteration, primarily driven by its high production costs, premium price, and perceived value (Kumar et al, 2009;Mohiuddin, 2019;Moore et al, 2012). Adulteration poses significant challenges for both consumers and traders and can manifest in various forms.…”