Officials of the Food Safety Department carried out a surprise inspection at the Sarojini Nagar Market to check the adulteration of sweets amid the festive season on Wednesday. Food Safety Officer, Tarun Negi said, "We are carrying surveillance drive-by checking different samples of sweets from different shops. None of the samples has been found adulterated yet. The drive will be carried out throughout the festive season. We are collecting samples from sweet shops only. We have an assistant and lab team with us. The same activity will be carried out a different location. Results will come out simultaneously."
Chemist of Delhi Food Lab, Pinky said, "We are checking different milk-based sweets...A starch test is done to check the adulteration of the sweets." She said that during the Diwali season starch adulteration in milk and milk-based sweets. "We took a sample in a test tube and we mix some distill water in it. We heated the sample and allowed it to cool. Then we mixed iodine solution. After mixing it with iodine solution if starch is present, then a deep blue black colour will appear. This signifies that the sample is adulterated with starch. If starch is absent then you will see brownish colour," she said.
She further said that shopkeepers adulterate sweets with aluminium leaves. "To adulterate they will use aluminium leaves instead of silver leaves. To distinguish between the two we will do chemical testing using concentrated nitric acid test. The silver leaves will dissolve in nitric test but aluminium leaves will not. For consumers, if they take silver leaves in hand they will disappear, but aluminium leaves will not disappear and form a ball like structure," she added.
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