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ulta
pulta
Mixed-up mithais
Jaspal Bhatti
 Every
year Diwali brings back adulteration days. For sweetshop owners and
food inspectors, the festival brings prosperity. However, we do not
depend upon food inspectors for checking and confiscating milawati
khoya. Because, over the years, our stomachs have become used to
digest any kind of adulterant. A few problems of food poisoning or
gastrointestinal diseases do occur when food product manufacturers and
sweet makers in India come up with new and cheap substitutes to be
used as adulterants. We understand that it is very difficult for the
government to reign in adulterators but they can at least test the
adulterated samples of mithai on rats and monkeys before
putting these in the market. But on second thought, activists working
against cruelty to animals will protest.
A healthy child in today’s
context is one who can readily digest anything from chalk powder to
diesel. A child, who can gulp down synthetic milk without falling sick
in the process, is considered the bravest these days. Synthetic milk
is generally a mixture of water, pulverised detergent or soap, sodium
hydroxide, vegetable oil, salt and urea.
A foreigner friend of
mine asked, "I hear that you have a high level of food
adulteration in your country. Don’t you fall sick after having such
foods and sweets?" I replied, "We do fall sick but only a
few Indian medicines can cure us." He asked, "Why only
Indian medicines?" I said, "Because they are equally
spurious."
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